THE HIVE 



BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT 

The Hive 
The Last Ditch 
Child and Country 
Lot & Company 
Red Fleece 
Midstream 
Down Among Men 
Fatherland 

NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 












COPYRIGHT, 1918, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



JUL 22 1918 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



M501237 



TO MARY 

. . . soft gold and deep 
fragrance and pomegranate red. 



FOREWORD 



There is much to say. Many have a part in 
this story of our days. Their work is on the 
table. Yet no manuscript, no chapter, is a real 
beginning. One must start a book this way — 
with a fresh sheet in the machine and tell what he 
is going to tell about. . . . First of all, it has to 
do with the unfolding of the child mind; all the 
Stonestudy work has been for that, but the brim- 
ming wonder of it all is that we have chiefly been 
employed unfolding ourselves. 

No one can begin upon the sweet and sacred 
story of life to a child without taking a stride 
nearer into the centre of things, and living it. 
That's what all telling is about — presently to stop 
talking and to catch up on conduct. The fairest 
culture of all is to become artists in life. . . . 
Thinking of this, thinking much upon this one 
thing, we have been lured out of the heaviness of 
work into the dimension of Play. We tell here 
about this particular passage. 

Also something about the story of Man and 
Woman, hinting at what is contained in pages of 
the Book of Life not opened heretofore for the 

[7] 



FOREWORD 



eyes of the many, but preparing now for the eyes 
of the children of the New Race — a beautiful 
story, be sure of that, but one that requires art 
in the telling. No one could bring this story to 
the lovers and the children of the New Race who 
had not found out that Beauty belongs to the di- 
vine trinity with Goodness and Truth. 

Many seers have not held that well in mind, 
many sages have forgotten it, many saints have 
not learned it adequately at all. We have to 
build our own heavens here before we can have 
them anywhere else. The more of an artist a 
man is, the more reverent he becomes about per- 
fecting his thought-forms. Just a mention now 
— that we rejoice to make much of the Beauty 
side of things in this book; that a thing cannot be 
beautiful and bad; that Beauty is the next quest 
of the many, as they escape one by one from the 
bondage of Gold. 

We try to express the Soul of things rather 
than to delineate boundaries of matter, but a very 
strong point is made upon the fact that one can- 
not deal in the spirit until he has mastered to a 
good degree the coarser stuff that bodies and 
worlds are made of. We do not care how the 
young minds aspire mystically, so long as their 
abutments hold fast in the bottom-lands. A man 
must not drag his anchor as he climbs the hill; 
he must unfold line all the way — a line made of 

[8] 



FOREWORD 



strands of himself, woven of his own wisdom, love 
and power. 

Much is made in this book of the fact that we 
are given pounds for a purpose — that all here be- 
low is symbol and intimation of a globe and per- 
fection elsewhere — that we cannot look upon the 
archetype of gold until we have mastered the imi- 
tation in clay. . . . We come even closer to this 
precious subject: For instance, we know that it 
is only from the soul of things that one can see 
materials — that no one can get a glimpse of the 
meaning of materials so long as he is lost in the 
ruck of them. At the same time we do not believe 
that we have access, even to the lesser grades of 
mysticism, until we have all the power and force 
of the material-minded. We believe we must do 
well that which the world is doing, even the tasks 
of the average man, that nothing can be missed. 

We do not encourage that mystic or poet who 
requires endowment. If we are to be artists, we 
believe in supporting our own groups ; we have a 
suspicion that we are not through with conditions, 
any conditions no matter how hateful, so long as 
they have us whipped. 

We aspire to be writers and politicians and 
painters and heroes ; we aspire to be masters in all 
the superb productions of life, but we are content 
to begin with the ground. We are content with 
poverty, yet we believe that very early as work- 
men, we are entitled to a fastidious poverty, which 

[Q] 



FOREWORD 



is expensive. No possessions — but all posses- 
sions. As writers we are convinced that it is nec- 
essary to do — and inimitably well — the things 
that the public wants and pays ten cents the word 
for, quite as well as to reveal the deeper folds of 
our growth for which we have to finance publica- 
tion. We are not sure yet which is the worthier 
achievement. 

Perhaps we speak much of Soul in this book, 
but we mean nothing more formidable than the 
better part of every man. This is the Big Fel- 
low who takes us over when we do that which is 
worth while — in billiards or diplomacy, in art or 
love or trade. I think it is the Big Comrade 
which we are really unfolding — the Workman 
and Player. Much of Soul, we write, because it 
is the point of our educational drive — to set It 
free in the child or the young workman, to make 
It speak or write or play, and not mere brain and 
hand. 

We speak much of love — not as an emotion, 
not as a sentiment, but as a cosmic force. You 
will see much more what we mean by this as you 
turn the pages. It is the most challenging thing 
in the world. It is the inner white-hot core of the 
Fatherland that is to be — the great white De- 
mocracy of the future. . . . 

Democracy — that's the point of inception of it 
all; that word is the seed. The more you dwell 
upon it — you know what the Seamless Robe of 

[10] 



FOREWORD 



the Christ means — the more you realise that the 
Master Jesus was the first Big Democrat. . . . 
We have them speak the word softly and thought- 
fully here each day — we like to hear the young 
ones say it. They are apt to know as much about 
it as you do — for the word doesn't mean exactly 
what they mean, who have used it most hereto- 
fore. It isn't the name of a political party — 
yet. ... It is government of the people by the 
people, but only to those who see the sons of God 
in the eyes of passing men. We only ask its 
magic, not its presence upon these pages. . . . 
They're fighting for it gloriously — every hour. 
The boys here thrill with the boys there. We 
hold our hands high to them. Some of our boys 
are there. They are all our boys ! Some are wait- 
ing the call to go — but there or here, we are pull- 
ing together for the real Fatherland, for the ade- 
quite fraternity, under the endless and thrilling 
magic of the word Equality. 

... I can say no more splendid word to you 
than My Equal : I know of no greater adventure 
than to become one of the Many. It is true that 
you and I — the best of us, the Immortal within 
us each, are of one house — that this is but a far 
outpost of the journey, Egypt if you like, the 
husks if you like — but that we have arisen and are 
on our way home to the Father's House. 

Canyon, Santa Monica, California. 



in] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

North Americans 17 

Quickenings 24 

Conquest of Fears 36 

The Stuff of Comrades 45 

John's Things 56 

Values of Letter Writing 70 

The New Dancing 79 

Old Pictures in Red 91 

Steve • . 101 

Hejira in 

The Spectator 118 

Tom and the Little Girl 129 

The Abbot 139 

The Artist Unleashed 155 

Work in Short Stories 164 

Valley Road Girl 172 

Beauty 183 

Shuk . 192 

Imagination 205 

Boys and Dogs 211 

The Man Who Found Peace 219 

[13] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Dithyramb and a Letter 233 

The Mating Mystery 241 

Chapter of Letters . 252 

Romance 267 

The Cosmic Peasant 277 

Resume 315 



[14] 



THE HIVE 



1 
NORTH AMERICANS 



THE thing called the New Rate — the 
passion of poets, the phantom running 
ahead and forever calling the dreamer 
and revolutionist and occultist, is far 
from a reality as yet among the commonplaces of 
the world. It is the spirit of everything worth 
while, but that means nothing to one who has 
not a breath of it in his own body. ... A story 
went forth from this shop recently in which cer- 
tain ideals and presences of the new social order 
were carried through to a cheerful ending. The 
publisher wrote, "Yes, but what is the New 
Race? 5 

It's a fair question, but remember one cannot 
adequately describe a spiritual thing in terms of 
matter. It is only possible of portrayal where it 
has broken through into terms of three-space. 
First you are apt to get the nearest and most strik- 
ing picture of the New Race at your own supper- 
table — the presence of one of your own children, 
especially if the young one is hard to understand. 

[17] 



THE HIVE 



Parents and children of all times have found 
confusion and alarm in each other's ways. But 
there are rare periods of human history when the 
difference between two generations has been not 
a normal and superficial crack, but an abyss. It is 
so now. The Old has reached its climacteric point 
of destructivity. All self-passions destroy them- 
selves in time. Fear, greed, sensuality — all are 
self-destructive. Great human numbers and de- 
cadent principles have been recently broken down 
in the world with a swiftness and abandonment 
heretofore unrecorded, except in the traditions of 
planetary flood and flame. . . . 

You may watch closely the child under seven 
who plays in the Unseen, whose companions are 
not in the room for older eyes; watch the one of 
fancies and fairies and fragrances which others 
cannot quite discern. Many a child has been driven 
with a soul-wound into corroding silence by par- 
ents who thought they were punishing falsehood, 
when they were in reality repressing the imagina- 
tion — the faculty which master-artists denote as 
the first and loveliest possession of the creative 
mind. Too coarse and unlit to see what the child 
saw, the parents again and again have looked 
gravely at each other, saying: 

"This is a crisis. Our child has begun to lie. 
We must forget her own feelings and punish 
her " 

So often it is her — but not always. The boys 
[18] 



NORTH AMERICANS 



who are to do the great tasks of song and prophecy 
and architecture — they, too, dream dreams and 
see visions and have the rapt eyes of Joan in the 
forests of Domremy; they, too, are severely ques- 
tioned by the pharisees; none escape this scourg- 
ing; they, too, in many cases shall be put to death. 

The new ideals of the parenthood, education, 
romance, are now being introduced and promul- 
gated by pioneers long since emerged from the 
old litter and humus. Education will mean first 
of all a turning for powet* to the Unseen. The 
quest of the Swan and the Star and the Beloved, 
are never carried along on the levels and inequali- 
ties of the earth— always the uplifted face for the 
saint and the sage and the seer. Great parents 
kneel beside their children and beg to be deliv- 
ered from the heaviness which holds them to the 
dim shadows, where the child sees face to face. 
Education will mean finding his intrinsic task for 
the child — the intensive cultivation of the human 
spirit from the Soul outward, not alone from the 
brain inward. 

The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The 
real meaning and symbol and glory of gold, as 
the highest, smoothest and most finished of miner- 
als, has been lost in the bulkier products and pos- 
sessions it meant to measure and signify. More 
and more has gold itself hid away from vulgar 
hands and been represented by objects intrin- 
sically inferior. We now behold a civilisation 

[19] 



THE HIVE 



destroying itself for commodities and destroying 
the commodities for which the destruction began. 

Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; 
commerce will serve aesthetics. The lovers of 
Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay. They 
love nature from the ground up; they are fervent 
for light and air, for sun and sky and water, for 
fruits and grains and bees, for stars and rains and 
romances. They say such things are holy. 
Words are inadequate for their loves and appreci- 
ations. They find the ways to love God infinite. 
They see Him in stone and stream ; they see Him 
in the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him 
risen and inevitable in the eyes of their lovers. . . . 

Straight goodness will not do for the New 
Race, nor straight intellectuality. Artists, singers, 
painters and idealists will be the heroes of the 
generations to come, for they will add the quest 
of Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints 
and pilgrims. 

These are but flaring points ; one is embarrassed 
in short space because of a myriad things to say. 
Free verse is a sign of the New, also the dream of 
a free world and the planetary patriotism. The 
immanence of the spirit of all things, is a sign; the 
sense of the underlying oneness of humanity; not 
alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland, where 
new Fountains are established and sages and mas- 
ters come for inspiration — all these, like a pass- 
ing train of wonder, a glimpse of many cars. . . . 

[20] 



NORTH AMERICANS 



I think I can bring the picture in closer by us- 
ing a few pages of work from one of the young 
men with me. His name is Steve. I called him 
The Dakotan,* in the book, Child and Country. 
We've romped and ridden together for three years, 
and I've known Steve better every day — still far 
from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's 
writing : 

NORTH AMERICANS 

Out of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse 
of Europe, the orient and the north countries, 
a gleaming archetype has emerged here which 
may be called the real North Americans. They 
are scattered here and there among the younger 
generation — young people new in name only; in 
soul they are as old as Zeus. Often they are 
strangers in their father's house. They blend the 
mind of the occidental with the soul of the east; 
splendid firstlings of an untried future. They be- 
tray themselves by their genius. Heredity is the 
first fetich overthrown by them. 

From the first they are a law unto themselves. 
They cast off churches, codes, creeds, schools and 
parents as preliminary steps in their teens. In 
the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts 
or the revolutions. It is their aim to overreach 
themselves, not to further a type. Very early 
they conjourn together in secret and obscure 
places, revolting against life as it is lived, like a 
handful of white dwellers in a foreign city. 

* H. A. Sturtzel. 

[21] 



THE HIVE 



There is always an alien, intangible something 
about these people. One senses the double life 
they lead, their own, and others. Conditions are 
not yet adjusted for them. They are super-na- 
tionalists, the first mark of the new. They are 
dreamers who make their dreams come true in 
matter, and first among their dreams is of the 
planet in one piece. They are naturally intoler- 
ant of barriers and partitions. They see ahead a 
new social order vast and shining as a devachanic 
vision — the real democracy of the future. They 
see that the new has come in not to kill, but to 
build. Theirs will be the spiritual heroics. Yet 
all this, of the greater patriotism, must not yet 
be spoken. It only alienates them the more from 
those they must live with. Their arch enemy is 
Ignorance, personified so often in their elders. 

It is noticeable that these young people are 
healthier, stronger, swifter, sharper, tougher, 
bolder and at the same time lighter and finer than 
the passing generation. They have the new 
healthiness. They belong to the open and are 
practically immune to disease. Theirs is the 
health of sun and wind and spirit — vitality in- 
stead of constitution, something the old can never 
understand. Constitution is weight, solid, ungiv- 
ing. Vitality is volatile, springy, electric, con- 
stantly being given, constantly being acquired, 
self-refining. Constitution does not change; it ac- 
cumulates all it can, then begins to die. . . . 

The young women of this new Race are open, 
strong, eye-to-eye, free spoken. They are capable 

[22] 



NORTH AMERICANS 



of friendships; they are not adverse to being 
wholly understood by males. They are not popu- 
lar with ordinary women, who surmise their su- 
periority but comprehend it not. Deceit, jeal- 
ousy and such common disturbances evident in 
the sex are unknown to them. They have char- 
acter and are lovely rather than beautiful. They 
are apt to go half way in their love-making, for 
who should know better when the chosen father 
of their children arrives. 

All of these people are bringers of true love. 
Love is their philosophy and religion. They 
listen to the heart as well as the brain. Others 
think them cruel in their discrimination in mating. 
They take all or nothing — prodigious riskers, 
great sufferers, throwing even love's dream on 
the board to be played for, and laughing as they 
play. The slightest blight on the loved one is 
deepest agony. 

Perhaps the surest way of discovering these 
young giants is to search about for the most sorely 
harassed children. Invariably they are put to it, 
to break into this day and generation. They fight 
their way up through all the banked-up ignorance 
and antagonism of unlit humanity. Often they 
are solitaires, coming and going with the secrecy 
of kings and eagles. 



[23] 



2 

QUICKENINGS 



A FEW pages of drift first of all with 
the younger boys. . . . There is a lane 
of Lombardy poplars from the Lake 
to the interurban car-line — a half mile. 
It is a lifting walk at any time, but summer even- 
ings are wonderful with all the sounds and scents 
of a true pastorale — lake-breath and meadow- 
lands, the whole sky to look at, and the murmur- 
ing dissonance of the poplars. Often we- walk 
to the car with passing guests. One evening a 
guest went away whom we loved very much. A 
lad of seven, named John, and I walked back 
from the car alone. 

He was ignited. I felt this at last through 
his hand. I had been thinking about my own 
things all too long, missing the beginnings of 
his talk. . . . He hurried forward in the dusk, 
speaking in a hushed rapt voice. Because I had 
missed the first part, I said : "John, I want you 
to write that — either to-night or to-morrow." 

[24] 



£UICKENINGS 



And this is what came in : 

The Magic Lane: 

It was at dusk. Two people left their tracks 
in Nature's dust road. 

Love is found on that road. It is the road of 
the mystics. 

They leave their love in it; Nature kisses their 
feet. 

Many horses' feet have been kissed on that 
mystic road. 

That mystic road will last forever. 

I long to walk upon that road of love. 

Love on that road will last forever. 

It is all true love. 

Our friends have been met on that road of 
love. 

It leads to the Hills of God. 

Certain spelling matters have been corrected. 
We pay little attention to spelling in the work 
here. The young ones learn by reading and get 
the proper look of a word altogether too soon in 
many cases. There was another high moment 
from John at the same time. The following three 
lines have stood out from the period with mem- 
orable magic: 

Wonder 

The soft breath of the Mother came in through 
the window of vines. 

[25] 



THE HIVE 

The stars were shining like the face of the 
New Generation. 

My spirit was away in the Hills. A noise at 
the door brought me back 

John then fell into a psychological tangle which 
we found little profit in following. By the 
"Mother" he referred to Nature. . . . The verse 
period has passed for the time. Around the age 
of seven, boys change. Often, as in this case, they 
are not so interesting for a while afterward. John 
is coming nine now and is writing "action" stories 
with all the worn and regulation props and set- 
tings. The early tendency will return with a 
dimension added. All transitions are times of 
disorder, but they are followed by larger areas 
and truer fulfilments of order. A cloud falls 
upon the sanctuary, but when it is dispelled, one 
perceives a lifted dome, bright with its new cloth 
of gold. 

I am struck every day in dealing with young 
boys how wisdom and beauty and truth can be 
inculcated in their lives, without pain and strain 
to them, and with great profit to the teacher. 
The young mind is quick to change. It has not 
grown its pharisaical ivory. . . . 

The sanction of a boy must be won on a physi- 
cal basis. A man must know what the boy knows 
and go him one better. The man must understand 
boy points of view, but never expect the boy 
to be puerile. Parents of the past generations 

[26] 



QUICKENINGS 



have had the steady effrontery to expect very 
little from children. "Why, they are only chil- 
dren!" has done more to make for vacuousness 
and drivel than any other visionless point of 
view, none of which has been missed. There 
is a difference in ages, to be sure. The child's 
mind has not massed for use the external impacts 
of twenty or thirty years of life in the world, but 
there is also an Immortal within — a singer, hero, 
builder, or a teacher possibly, eager to manifest 
through the child's fresh mind, fervid to bring 
the mind of the child to its subjection, for the ex- 
pression of its own revelations. Indeed, the 
parents themselves are enjoined to become as little 
children. In arriving at this wisdom and humility, 
they may suddenly find masters in their own 
children. 

There is also a lad here of seven named Tom. 
Yesterday I found him beside me on the sand, 
down by the water's edge. I began to tell him 
about the Inner Light that we all carry. You 
can talk over a child's head, if your words are 
choked with mental complications (which is apt 
to be second-rate talk, anyway), but you seldom 
are out of reach of a fine child's grasp when you 
speak of spiritual things. He was sitting cross- 
legged, folded hands between his knees— a little 
six pointed star — head and shoulders the three 
upper points, knees with folded hands between, 
the three lower. He was bare from the waist up 

[27] 



THE HIVE 



and thighs down, and brown as the honey of buck- 
wheat. ... I told him that the seventh and per- 
fect point of his star was within; that if he shut 
his eyes and kept very still, putting away for the 
present all his thoughts about himself, his feelings, 
his wants and his rights — looking into himself 
as one would look ahead for a lamp in the night, 
listening deep within, as one would listen for the 
voice of a loved friend, — I promised that at last 
he would see what the three wise men saw — the 
Star in the East. He need only follow that Star 
and be true to its guidance to come at last to the 
Cave and the Solar Babe. . . . After that I 
hinted that I would come to his feet and listen. 

Tom felt that it was worth trying for at once — 
shut his eyes, turning all thoughts and gaze within. 
He held the posture long. ... I have marvelled 
again and again at the quickness with which the 
child-mind attains to concentration so essential 
for all original production. The little ones have 
no mad emotional lists to sort out and subdue; 
their wants are simple "yes" and "no" in so many 
cases. Indeed, they are spared the struggle of 
becoming as little children. . . . Tom held the 
posture, until I was actually tense from the strain 
of waiting and keeping my thoughts from calling 
his. 

It was a picture — sun-whitened hair, long yel- 
low lashes, brown body with a bit of babe's soft- 
ness left to it, and glorious sunlight. He opened 

[28] 



OUICKENINGS 



his eyes at last saying that he had the door, where 
the light was, almost opened, when a fly bit 
him. 

I thought of the perfection of the instance 
of the mind's waywardness — the coming of the 
Master spoiled by a fly bite. . . . Tom will 
search for his Star every day. It is strange that 
he is closer to the hill-pastures around Bethlehem, 
under seven, than for years afterward. 

To learn concentration in mid-life after the 
world "has been put through a man," is an ordeal 
at best; and yet we are by no means masters of 
ourselves, nor capable of significant achievement 
until the brain can be stilled at will of its petty 
affairs (the first aim of concentration) and be- 
comes the glad servant of the "giant" within. 

A little later I saw Tom on the back of a huge 
black walk-trot saddle-horse of show quality — 
passing up the Lane at a fast clip, his feet half 
way to the stirrups, holding on to the saddle 
with one hand, the bridle-rein in the other. A 
year or two ago I should have been afraid to per- 
mit that, but we manage now to relieve the young 
ones of a large part of our fears for their welfare. 
Children have enough to overcome from their 
parents. Frequently the New Age young people 
have to master their heredity before they begin 
upon themselves. 

Life is a big horse to ride, so often a black 
horse. It is well to start children free and un- 

[29] 



THE HIVE 

afraid. We do not let them dwell in thought 
of pain. We do not permit tears. We inform 
them early that to be sick is a confession of un- 
cleanness, that lying is for the use of cowards 
only, and that to be cruel marks the idiot. 

We are occasionally serious over repeated fail- 
ures, but we laugh over things done well. Tennis 
has unfolded marvellous possibilities in the train- 
ing of will force. Children are shown that there 
is a mystic quality to all the perfect games — that 
the great billiardists and tennis and baseball play- 
ers perform feats in higher space, whether they 
know it or not. There is the essential ideal first 
in the making of the athlete as in the making of 
the poet. The great moments of play require 
faculties swifter and more unerring than the hu- 
man eye or hand or mind. Ask the master of 
any game if he had time to think in pulling off 
the stroke that won. It is inspiration that he 
uses quite the same as the poet in his high mo- 
ments. 

Education is the preparation of the mind to 
receive and answer to inspiration from a plane 
above. The more you develop merely the brain 
of a child, the more he is detached from the great 
principles of being, the more also is he closed to the 
real, and subjected to the danger of actual lesion 
and sickness. The more you develop the spirit of 
a child, or rather give the significant One within 
an opportunity to come forth and be the child, 

[30] 



QUICKENINGS 



the more you make for beauty, health, goodness 
and glory of bodily life. ... A lucky day when 
you start really to associate with your children, 
luckier still when you undertake the work of 
teaching them incidental to your own work. Then 
and there, you begin to realise that children are 
close to a source of things that you cannot touch. 
Presently you realise that they are teaching 
you. . . . 

Day after day I have studied and practised the 
development of the child from within outward. 
I have seen the capacity to synthesise and assimi- 
late mere mental matters developed in a year, 
by training the mind from the centre of origins 
outward, that mental training alone could never 
accomplish. The mind itself becomes vigorous 
and avid and capacious and majestically swift. 
It is trained to express its true self. That is 
power — that is king-play. This sentence covers 
the whole matter: 

The perfect way to develop the mind of the 
child is to teach him to sit and listen at the feet 
of his own master, the Soul. 

The right to live and to bring the laughter of 
power to the days must be won afresh each morn- 
ing. No two days alike. We make ourselves 
impossible to children of the New Age by trying 
to confine them in the laws and rules of yester- 
day. The young people whom I serve live in a 
different intensity. Their interest flags if I repeat, 

[3i] 



THE HIVE 



if I fall into familiar rhythms. Continually they 
spur me on. I think, after all, great teaching 
is the capacity to feel what the younger minds 
are thinking. If we are too coarse to catch the 
first warning of their resistance, they slip farther 
and farther from our grasp. 

It would not seem possible to hold American 
young people with spiritual affairs ; yet this is done 
daily. We call the Unseen — the great gamble. 
I have shown how all else betrays — how all mat- 
ter is a mockery at the last — that even love and 
friendship fail for those who are called to weep 
and worship wholly at the tomb of the body. . . . 
The truth is out: The beginnings of real teach- 
ing is in making the Unseen interesting and dra- 
matic. 

We dwell upon the mystic white lines which 
connect all things — the sources of daring and 
beauty and creativeness. I ask my young people 
where they were — when they did any rare and 
improved bit of work, when they felt like great 
comrades, met some magnanimous impulse, arose 
to superb instants of play, or when in Chapel the 
big animation touched us all and set us free. 
They always answer that they were out of them- 
selves. 

That's a secret of the new teaching again — 
to lift the students out of themselves. Men take 
to drink or drugs for this same reason: men and 
women set out on the great adventures, pleasures 

[32] 



QUICKENINGS 



and quests for this. We hunger and toil for this 
freedom; we suffer and adore — to get out of our- 
selves. Mental teachings tie us in more firmly. 
The teaching here — and no two days alike — is 
to startle and encourage the young minds to arise 
and live and breathe in that lovelier and more 
spacious dimension which at least borders upon 
the Unseen. The doors open and shut so softly. 
One does not know he has been out — until he is 
back with strange light in his eyes and in his hands 
a gift from the gods. 

The essential spirituality of the new teaching 
must not be confused with religious affairs as they 
are known and exploited in the world. You can- 
not teach the New Age religion of the world's 
kind. It has its own. No dry as dust sage will 
do. A snort will answer your sanctimoniousness ; 
flexible science will reply to the abysses of 
your logic. . . . You must be the consummate 
artist if never before in your life, to teach the 
beauty of the soul to youth. The young workers 
of the new social order will never bring forth 
their great harvests from your reflected light. You 
must be spontaneous — you must flood them with 
pure solar gold; you must show them by your 
life and your work, how you come and go into 
the Unseen. 

There is no rest. . . . One commands his disci- 
ples to go forth at last. The teacher strides for- 

[33] 



THE HIVE 



ward faster when they cling. He tells them one 
day they must race the gamut to follow him ; and 
the next day he puts another in his place and begs 
to be allowed a cushion in the midst of the chil- 
dren. . . . We hold them by setting them free 
— the first law of love. All unions of the future 
— in trade and friendship and matrimony — will 
be founded upon the principle of freedom; and 
this is the essence of the new teaching — to liber- 
ate the children into their larger and God-quick- 
ened selves. 

No rest and no two days alike. 

A Bob White called me this morning across 
the uncut hayfields at the edge of the lake- 
bluff. . . . His two smooth and patient notes 
seemed to contain the secret of putting off all 
fret and fear and unrest. He seemed to ask if I 
had not done this already — had not yet put all 
boyish and merely temporal things away? "Not 
yet? . . . Not yet?" he called the question. 

I answered that I would try again, and I set 
out straightway to be honest once more with the 
world, with the soil and with myself. I would 
begin with the clay again to be clean — to rise and 
think and dwell in cleanliness, to think no 
thought, to perform no action second-rate — to 
begin with the Laugh again — the warm laugh of 
conquest that always opens some inner door to 
fresh powers — to arise afresh in the glory and 
gamble of the Unseen. ... I returned and saw 

[34] 



QUICKENINGS 



the young ones one by one — from Tom and John 
up to the men and women — doing their work. I 
set about mine with a laugh and called the day 
good. The teacher knows best who is taught. 



[35] 



3 
CONQUEST OF FEARS 



AN interesting boy of ten and I have 
been much together in the open 
weather. We have learned many 
things, but nothing more important 
than what a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we 
take chances or that it is wise to risk life or limb. 
Fine discrimination is back of all training in the 
arts of life; still we certainly have found that 
Fear is a waster and diminisher of beauty and 
power — and that it can be mastered. 

About the most fascinating thing that life has 
shown me is the way in which fine examples of 
the younger generation learn the deeper matters 
of life — matters of self-mastery which make the 
very presence of a lad significant to a stranger, 
and which formerly were supposed to be secrets 
for the sons of kings alone. 

"Do you fear anything?'' I ask. "Look deep. 
Listen deep — do you fear anything? . . . It's 
like the pain that tells you of a weakness or 

[36] 



CONQUEST OF FEARS 



disease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task 
of conquest ahead for you. That which you fear 
most is the thing to conquer first " 

There had been much of this talk of Fear before 
a laughable personal experience showed me how 
much I asked. 

I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop- 
off — two hundred feet sheer. It astonished me. 
I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver of 
horror for years. All members and muscles bolted 
at the thought of advancing closer to the edge. I 
sat down to think it out. It never had occurred 
before that I wasn't my nervous system, and must 
not let it get me down. 

The more I thought, the more I perceived that I 
must do the thing I dreaded so. In fact, I had 
told trusting young people that they were not 
their bodies, not their emotions, not even their 
minds — that these must be made to obey. Here 
I had a chance to prove if I were less in action 
than talk. I forced my fluttering young 
self to the edge. . . . Dizziness — wobbly limbs, 
fancied shoves from behind, the call of the huge 
shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting 
in mid-air, the body thumping down, another and 
liberated self gladly spurning the ground — all 
these symptoms of panic followed swiftly. 

I held until calm came, and I then could study 
this little coil of forgotten fears — a civilised 
mess. . . . The weakness was absurdly easy to 

[ 37 ] 



THE HIVE 



overcome after the will was once aroused. There's 
no end or limitation to will force when awakened. 
The greater the man, the more awe he has for this 
subject. There's a glow that follows conquest 
of any kind; the mere call of the will to action 
brings a sense of power in the heart. There is 
no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, pas- 
sion, fear, or any of these tentacles of personality 
— than to summon the power of will to instant 
action. The particular matter of this precipice 
showed me a trick about calling up the force — 
priceless to me afterward in bigger tests, and for 
opening the way of self-conquest to boys. 

One must decide what one wants to do — then 
carry it out to the death. Discrimination, art, 
all culture and knowledge may be brought to 
bear in making the decision — but after that, it 
must be carried out — just that. 

Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel 
them there. They are quicker than thought. 
Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some 
sight or sound or odour, before your mind could 
tell you what you were afraid of. ... I 
have often told the young ones here — listen- 
ing a bit to my own voice — that there isn't any- 
thing living or dead, phantom, shell, or living 
soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit 
of man quail. 

Courage is spirit. 

[38] 



CONQUEST OF FEARS 



Most people don't care to try to deal with 
it; they let it have its way. . . . Do you recall 
the fears of the dark room as a child— fear al- 
ways stealing behind — upstairs alone, the rush to 
the light, almost screaming tension? . . . I heard 
a patter of steps the other evening and knew the 
whole story — a boy of seven. He had been sent 
upstairs without a light. I sent him back, told 
him to stay there untU he got himself in hand — 
to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. 
He was well afterward. 

I have known some under-fire work. A man 
soon gets himself in hand to look straight at a 
white- fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished 
another test. From a child the deep-sea devour- 
ers had an exquisite fascination for me — to be cut 
in two under brine, white belly, backward mouth, 
black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of 
teeth. . . . Pacific Islanders swim in the same 
harbour with fourteen-foot scavengers, careless of 
whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their 
boats at the sight of one solitary, different fin. I 
had seen the so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey 
nurses," dim grey horrors with dull black spots. 
A well-fed imagination also came into play. 

I went swimming in the surf with a splen- 
did Australian chap — a doctor home from the 
trenches. . . . He left me back in the surf lines 
and started out to sea. I finished my swim de- 

[39] 



THE HIVE 



cently in toward North America, and lay on the 
strand. From time to time off in the sunset I saw 
my friend's head. ... I was glad to grab the 
beach-comber when he came in. 

"It's all perfectly sane and splendid," I said, 
"and I'm glad to have you back for supper with 
us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless all 
that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I 
venture to ask — what if a grey nurse should hap- 
pen in from the lower islands?" 

"You don't think about them," he said. 

That's about all there is to the fear subject. 
You don't let it get you. There is nothing worth 
fearing in or above or under the plane of mani- 
festation. ... So I tried that out in deep water. 
The old horrors succumbed like the fear of the 
precipice, but not so readily, quite. One can 
imagine keenly in the dim deep ; the touch of sea- 
weed quickens all the monsters of the mind. . . . 

There's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it 
is the self. When we get the ape and the tiger, 
the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard and the 
shark and the carcajou of our own natures mas- 
tered, there isn't anything left to do but to tally 
them off outside, a friendly finish with them all. 
No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us 
favours some species from time to time. 

I have thought much about fear. In another 
place I told how we have overcome inertia; how 

[40] 



CONQUEST OF FEARS 



we developed senses through the hard administry 
of fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, 
however, these must be overcome. . . . One of 
the last physical fears to let go in my case is that 
for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement 
really wanted the axe in preference to the hemp. 
Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely vanishes. 

The point of it all is that you can teach self- 
command to the children. ... I took a girl of 
fourteen to my precipice — left her there standing 
on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. 
Her face was calm as if she had gazed from a 
porch. . . . 

"Did you feel any fear?'' I asked. 

"Only yours for me," she answered. 

It was very true. I had the thing whipped for 
myself, but it had been hard to leave her there. 

Finally I took the smaller boys out for a test. 
They didn't know I was testing them. Children 
haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I 
recalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, 
in which I startled the elders by Sam Patch imi- 
tations. Also I have put the young ones through 
some deep water affairs. . . . 

You may not be able to get it quite — but all 
fear is illusion. Every inner beast mastered makes 
us stronger. These animals within are our cosmos 
to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are 
until we lose our fear for them. Boys and girls 

[40 



THE HIVE 



here are learning these things and putting them in 
action. 

The kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, 
passion, anger, poverty, and the like — all 
represent areas of our own kingdom not 
yet brought under perfect cultivation. . . . 
After the emotional and physical conquests 
come the psychic ones — hard matters of 
mastery pertaining to the heart and mind — 
to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent — 
then the finding of the hidden treasures of the 
subconscious, mystic fleets that sail those dim 
seas, as yet uncharted for most of us. . . . After 
that, the Soul. At last we must be potent 
enough to stand eye to eye in the presence of the 
King Himself. 

From looking steadily over an escarpment of 
two or three hundred feet drop, to gazing at the 
world from the forward cockpit of an airplane at 
two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step 
as you would imagine. The fact is, I was in no 
way terrified in my first flight, and fear certainly 
crawled me full length as I stood that time at 
the edge of the mesa. Our young people have the 
call to test the new dimension of wings. This 
zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new 
education. Intellect stays upon the ground. In- 
tuition is the lifting of the wings of the mind. 

I had already begun to make friendly visits to 
an aerodrome at the edge of the Pacific when the 

[42] 



: 



CONQUEST OF FEARS 



following letter came from the Abbot,* who is 
now seventeen and in New York : 

. . . Perhaps Steve told you that I had a 
ride in an airplane about three weeks ago. Man ! 
'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as 
school dissipates, I attach my name to the Royal 
Flying Corps. The psychic effect of a flight is 
wonderful — like travelling over a very tall bridge. 
The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile 
as a map, the roads stretched as thin mathematical 
lines ; forests as darker shadows of the earth ; New 
York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork. 
For twenty minutes we sailed around and around, 
just as you've seen a gull pinion, then we came 
to earth; waited until it got dark, then up again. 
. . . Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels 
upon the earth, but up, up we went, faster and 
higher, the roar of the propeller providing a steady 
nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out — I 
had to relieve myself of the excess thrill. 

Then what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, 
like the disc of a golden dollar, the sun began to 
lift up from the horizon again. The higher we 
went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as 
a golden bulb, a swollen orange off in the mighty 
stretches, — pure, golden, — while below twinkled 
the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most 
brimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the 
cosmos overtakes the heart and lays down its stu- 
pendous laws. The distance between sun and 
'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could 
* Fred Jasperson. 

[43] 



THE HIVE 



absorb your flight. I was aware only of worship- 
ping God, and that roar of the machine made one 
think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, 
all the suns, roa-oa-ring. What a romance! 
Finding the sun ! 

. . . No discussion of the fear element what- 
soever in the letter. . . . 

The old thrills won't do for the new race. I 
took a pair of screen-trained young ones to a cir- 
cus recently and became absorbed at their mild 
boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the 
wastrel tendencies of the modern hour. The sad 
ones of the new generation use high potency drugs 
to forget the drag of time and space. A new 
dimension is required in all things. The young 
men of the new race make light of our old dreads 
and are learning winged ways to heaven and to 
hell. 



[441 



4 
THE STUFF OF COMRADES 



I WONDER if I can make clearer, by turn- 
ing a few different facets in this chapter, 
what we mean by friends, comrades, the 
spirit of things, and love not as an emo- 
tion but as a cosmic force. Many days I have 
faced a Chapel, as I face this day's work, long- 
ing to bring in closer the dream of the new social 
order, yet dismayed by the limitations of words 
and my own mind, trained so long in the life of 
the old. ... I would begin to talk, drawing the 
young minds to mine through an intimate revela- 
tion of the heart, then presently lose the sense of 
effort, even the sense of thought — and an hour 
would pass in the joy of communal blessedness, 
because we were one. 

Man is not getting larger, though he is con- 
tinually holding more. The human brain, after 
it reaches a certain age and size, may gain there- 
after a conception of the universe without alter- 
ing the size of the hat-band. There is a continual 

[45] 



THE HIVE 



condensation at work within us mentally and 
physically. We take the cream of the thing, and 
throw the rest away. The wiser and the more 
inclusive we become, the more we take just the 
spirit of a thing, and leave the bulk and weight 
behind. 

This is true in our every refinement, in the 
clothes we wear, the food we eat, the books we 
read and the friends we gather together. We 
become harder and harder to suit, because bulk 
and weight are common, but the spiritual extract 
of anything is slow to appear for us. The wiser 
the man, the more fastidious he is, and this does 
not mean that he is a crank. The excellence of 
fastidiousness is not in eccentricity but in inclu- 
siveness. In the spirit of the thing, he sees all. 
From the spirit of the thing, he expresses in his 
own way any part. He can array whole hier- 
archies of facts from the spirit of the whole, but 
mainly he leaves the facts in reference-libraries, 
where they belong and are quickly available, and 
stores away in his working faculties just a drop 
of the oil of a subject or a breath from its es- 
sence. 

There are those who believe that the soul of 
man is made up of essences of experiences of 
thousands of lives — yet the refinement of the soul 
is so spiritualised that the best surgeon cannot 
find the little organ. He knows the brain, which 
is made up of the stored experiences of but one 

[46] 



THE STUFF OF COMRADES 

life, but because the soul is so small or so diffused, 
the surgeon is very apt to say that there is no 
such organ. And yet, we all know there is knowl- 
edge and power behind us, which drives us, in our 
greater moments, to utterances and action entirely 
without the scope of the brain. We may call 
this the soul, or the nth power, or the fourth 
dimension — the name doesn't matter. . . . Lis- 
ten, if I write well to-day — I mean well for me 
— if I rise to the opportunity at all, it will be 
because I am writing things which my brain doesn't 
know. 

I yearn to make this still clearer. . . . The 
rose, which is the highest evolved of flowers, in- 
cludes all the evolution of plant-life of its line 
beneath ; the same with gold among the minerals. 
The fact that each is the highest necessitates that. 
In the same way, man includes Nature and the 
lower creatures, in that he is the highest. This is 
easily proven to you when you recall that a child 
in the womb passes through all states of creature 
evolution. That period is, in a wonderful way, a 
review of the evolution of the world. 

The mere fact that the higher one climbs, the 
farther one can see, proves it again. This is a 
law. The scent of a rose is the sublimate of all 
plant odours ; and the spirit of man is the refine- 
ment of all knowledge and experience beneath. 

The higher man ascends, the more inclusive. 
[47] 



THE HIVE 



To heal another, the physician must be able to 
include the other. Evolution is continual refine- 
ment — the drawing unto ourselves of the spirit 
of bulks of matter. I stood upon a bluff overlook- 
ing the ocean recently, and a breath of the south 
wind awakened in my mind the story of one 
whole summer; others have listened to forest trees 
or the humming roar of a distant city, or the rush 
of a great river, and found in them the aggregate 
of all Nature's sounds in one tone. This is the 
magic of the spirit of things. 

In all philosophy, there is no difference of opin- 
ion as to one fact, that man is unfolding a micro- 
cosm within himself, including in his conscious- 
ness more and more the Idea of the Universe. 
The cosmic consciousness, which a few have at- 
tained, is the actual perception of the externals 
of the Plan. 

The cream of anything includes all the parts. 
The cosmic mind must include the essence of all 
arts and experiences and facts. Just as the rose 
and the man and the grain of dust are potential 
with all beneath, the highest man, the cosmic in- 
telligence, is potentially the cosmos in containing 
the Idea of it. 

This idea may be contained in and expressed 
outwardly by some great single, all-including, all- 
mastering emotion — such as love. And now we 
are in a region where there can be no difference 

[48] 



THE STUFF OF COMRADES 



of opinion; at le&s> A have never heard disputed 
what is the greatest thing in the world. 

There are all kinds of love. The simple man 
loves simply — himself, his woman, his children 
and his animals. The love of the cosmic conscious- 
ness breaks forth in a deluge upon the race, be- 
cause it comprehends and includes all beneath. 
This great outpouring is formed of earth, air, 
water, fire, sunlight and all winds, all facts, all 
experiences, all arts, light of the moon and stars 
and all glowing things under the sun, all sounds 
and scents and pictures, all ardours, and sympa- 
thies and tolerances. Its outpouring is action, 
and is of itself creative. This is the OM. Such 
a love leavens and impregnates all things, be- 
cause it understands and includes all things. It 
unifies all separateness ; it enfolds all intelligence 
with intuition; it unites all parts. 

This brings us to that ancient and unassailable 
premise of all religions — that God includes every 
part of the universe in being the spirit of it; 
that His idea of creativeness is expressed in one 
great single, all-mastering and including emotion, 
— which is love. We hear the little children say- 
ing it, "God is love." 

. • . We awaken the Ideal in ourselves first 
by imitating the virtues of others. In the earlier 
days wher* to me courage meant physical action, 
men passed in different fields, leaving an imper- 

[49] 



THE HIVE 



ishable remembrance. I have often seen the ex- 
pressions of those I loved and idealised as a boy, 
live again in the faces of my own children. John 
T. McCutcheon in Luzon, filling a reel of films, 
under a volley of fire at Binan, on his knees, work- 
ing the camera with a whole brigade sprawled 
behind — gave me one of the finest early building 
blocks for the courage among men. He also gave 
me an ideal of cleanliness : One evening, after a 
vicious day's march, and we were all ravenous, 
John T. left camp to find a river. There he bathed 
with government bouquet, — made himself right 
with himself, even to shaving, before meat 
and drink. His constraint looked like mas- 
tery to me then. Grant Wallace was a big star 
of that service — ideal in performance of friend- 
ship. . . . Young men at hand now are different. 
Not one of them lack in grip and grit. They 
reveal the new thing in courage, the courage that 
begins where the courage of the soldier ends. 
These have gone far into the mystery of their own 
kingdoms — rapidly becoming kings of themselves. 
The world doesn't understand them. The Ab- 
bot* is a sensation in literary matters at Colum- 
bia, but unplaced. The Dakotan * was said to 
be unfit for a soldier because he was twenty pounds 
under weight for his height. He can leap five 

* These appear in Child and Country. 

[50] 



THE STUFF OF COMRADES 

feet six, run or hike indefinitely, exhaust a ce- 
ment-mixer, say "stick" in all tongues and "quit" 
in none. He has the will arid wisdom to make 
himself a new man over night — and yet his Gov- 
ernment wants him served up just so, in pounds. 
There isn't any one loves America more than the 
Dakotan, whom we now call Steve. Even the 
young military surgeons will know before long 
that endurance is a matter of spiritual culture, 
that courage is spirit — -that a man is well because 
of cleanliness of body and thought and organised 
will; that he doesn't fail in a pinch because he 
is evolved; that all the higher forms of life call 
for speed rather than strength, the levitating 
force of spirit rather than the gravitating force 
of flesh, for brain rather than brute. . . . Com- 
rade stuff is the stuff of souls. . . . I've studied 
them long and devotedly. I build my days upon 
the things these boys show me. Less and less are 
we different from those who call to our hearts. 

These young men do not think themselves out ; 
they are not troubled by misses or personal dis- 
crepancies. They simply are themselves. I have 
perceived that men of dreams and genius and ac- 
tion are in the larger sense free from themselves. 
The main part of their day's performance is a 
lifting out of the tangle of emotion and desire, into 
a large, unrestricted area full of calm daylight, 
where events and movements are seen in their rela- 

[5i] 



THE HIVE 



tion to one another, not in separateness and one 
at a time, an area also where inspiration is mo- 
mentarily expected to strike. They do not ana- 
lyse themselves. They do not hear their own 
voices. They are not dismayed if they falter or 
drop from the key. The things that most men 
do with care, and that occupy so much of the days 
these young men perform automatically. 

My own path was upward through an intense 
self-consciousness — the American, not the oriental 
way. I lived with myself all the route. I ob- 
served outward conditions and events, domestic, 
civic and cosmic; but at the same time observed 
their effects upon myself. I did not know until 
I was adult that there is a big receptivity of con- 
sciousness above this — where intuitions play and 
weave causes and effects together — where the 
mind is more like a child's than a man's, or more 
like a giant's, perhaps — where the big faith comes, 
and the warm laugh comes, and man surpasses 
himself, but does not know until afterward, if 
at all. 

Warmth flooded into me as I touched this larger 
consciousness. It became clear as daylight — 
that a man is at his best only when out of himself. 
I saw much of my misery and depression was 
the result of self-analysis. I was a better man 
when I let myself go utterly. And this was ex- 
actly the thing that happened in moments of dan- 

[5»] 



THE STUFF OF COMRADES 

ger, moments of romance and friendship, mo- 
ments of the self hurling itself outward. Capacity 
for these moments makes the Comrade, and indi- 
cates that love which is not a sentiment, but a 
cosmic force. 

Again, you cannot describe a spiritual thing 
with these little tools and materials in black and 
white— -just intimations. ... If we are sweet 
enough inside, something of the song will come 
to us. . . . Two words suggest it best. The first 
is Comrade^ which has become a silliness in a mili- 
tary sense, yet has a high and holy meaning to 
all reconstructionists. ... I remember when the 
word first came to me with a thrill, as a young 
lad going off to Cuban wars. It was burned out 
of me a few days afterward in a Sibley tent full 
of regular army soldiers. ... I remember the 
scorn with which I used the word all the years — 
or avoided using it — until slowly, smilingly, its 
new dimension opened, hard as a diamond, and as 
clear — its meaning in work and world and 
women, its new meaning to Russia and India and 
China and America. 

It seems to say Equality. It's a kind of deep 
drink of spirit together, a word spoken at the 
last moment between men — an inner-shrine word, 
spoken with a smile, and a glimpse into the eter- 
nal indestructibility of the human heart. It ex- 
presses the love of the world, not as it is felt in 

[53] 



THE HIVE 



the brain, but in the breast of the soul. The New 
Race has already washed it clean. It goes with 
a Cause fit to die for. It belongs to men and 
women who can look at each other with a kind of 
prayer in their eyes and face death alone and 
laugh at it. 

There's a fury, too, in the word — fury against 
the world, against things as they are. It stands 
against the world-darkness now, and for the day 
that is to be. It means love for the poor, a love 
for the peasants, a passion to serve and be tender 
to them, not to drive them into the pits of death — 
a readiness to die for them without cant^ a readi- 
ness also to dare to live for them. 

Comrade — there's vision in it to strip off the 
masks of decadent nations, to open wide the sepul- 
chres where the priests are still plotting to crucify 
the King; its strong magic will uncover the mo- 
notonous crimes of commerce. ... It signifies 
the spirit of the young men and women who have 
already begun with gladness and fire to clear the 
debris for the building of the New Age. 

They will begin with the soil; they will know 
and love their own hard part. They will begin 
with the grass, with the rice, with the millet and 
the wheat, the clean things, the simple and holy 
things that the peasants love, with the songs that 
the peasants sing, the songs of the soil and the 
rivers and snows — to build upon them the new 

[54] 



THE STUFF OF COMRADES 

heaven and the new earth. . . . Above all, there's 
a laugh in the word — the laugh of youth and 
power. 

The other word is Democracy. 



isrt 



5 
JOHN'S THINGS 



HERE are some of John's things, 
mainly letters to the Old Man. Cal- 
ifornia called hard for the recent 
winter, and I went out a few weeks 
ahead of the Stonestudy outfit. John intended 
to follow within three weeks, but overturned a 
kettle of boiling water in his lap, and was unable 
to leave his quarters for three times that period. 
We all learned better the hard lesson — to wait. 
The quoted word "Play" in his first letter refers 
to a little slip of paper which I had pasted upon 
my typewriter. There has been a big tendency 
in recent months, in my case, to let down all ten- 
sion in relation to literary production — the idea 
being that when one has learned all the laws he is 
capable of, the time is at hand when it is well to 
forget them. I have written several times through- 
out this book of an ideal emergence of Workman 
into Player. We learn many laws, to learn at last 
that there are none. We come up through many 

[*6] 



JOHNS THINGS 



slaveries to freedom. ... I have not corrected 
all the spelling in John's documents. The point 
most interesting is how the real voice breaks 
through the mind of a child of nine from time to 
time. 

Dear Younervers* Pal: 

We got your letter but it was not like you for 
it was not type-written. Your old machine here 
is going grand. I am using it now. It seems 
that I am with you all the time. Comrad has 
meant a lot the last fo^ur days to me. Comrad is 
everything in the New Race. Masters will be 
comrads with every one. 

That "Play" has it all, on your machine. 
"Play 55 is in all somewhere. It is all like a big 
page and everything is woven on it. There is a 
time when Comrads hafto go apart for a little 
while, but not long. Their thoughts never go 
apart. They are always pulling together, always 
weaving in thoughts and things that are the same. 
It is wounderful — a parting. No sadness over it. 
It is the best that could come, or it would not. 
We are held together. The pull of the world is 
nothing to us. 

It is hard to keep high, but we will. Fred* 
and I take a swim every day. I go a hundred 

* Universe. 

* The Abbot. 

[57] 



THE HIVE 



and fifty feet. Then we come up and rub each 
other. 

True Comrads have it all. Love from Com- 
rad to Comrad. 

Pal: 

I woke up this morning kind of blurred, and 
got Irving and Steve to come out and clean up 
the barn. They came and we worked there all 
morning, and then went in for a swim. It was 
wounderful, the feel I had when I got some clean 
clothes on and had the old dog * feeling good. 
He is meditating over what a wounderful world it 
is now. The stall smells sweet as a hay-stack. 

Fred just got here and is working at your desk. 

How was your morning? I never had a better 
one, and its the weary old Sabbath, too. 

Send for me soon now. It seems that it was 
a year since we have been together. We can not 
do without each other. Send for me Soon. I 
hold my hand high to you. 

Dear Old Magic Fath : 

I am at Steve's desk in the guest room. It is 
the first time that I have touched the keys of a 
type writer since the night I was berned. It sure 
does feel good. 

It has been much more wonderful to haf to have 
Patience for the Meeting. It will be twice as 

* The saddle horse. 

[58] 



JOHNS THINGS 



great for both. I have needed you so since I have 
been in bed. In pane and sicknes there is noth- 
ing that you need so much as your Comrad. 

I felt palms up to everything. It is all good. 
We love it all. It all was something for us to 
get. It puts us higher after something comes to 
us like that. 

I have all the pores poring out love to you. We 
are always together. 

Your Side Kiker. 

Dear Old Pal: 

Fred and I slept again in the Study. It looked 
like a storm last night, but it did not come. Fred 
is a real Comrad. I got to his heart last night. 
I do not know how. The roses have been woun- 
derful the last few days. 

How is wounderful Mary? We are all send- 
ing Thoughts to you. We have had wounderful 
full days lately, all heat. The town is howling 
for rain now; they are never satisfied. We are 
always ready for anything. It is the best. Our 
wounderful old mailtrain just crossed the magic 
lane. I love trains more and more. They have 
a pull to my heart. We love everything. 

I do not feel on erth. I feel in space. Out 
of the draw of the erth — Free. 

Love always in my heart for you. I hold hard 
for the time that Comrads pull together again for 

[59] 



THE HIVE 



the road, us two. Jane is at my hump all the 
time — so I will quit. 

Dear Old Comrad: 

We are close this morning. I can feel your 
warm wounderful hand in mine this morning. We 
are one. There is the holy breath — such a great 
pull of thoughts and work to California. It seems 
as if all the Comrads were calling me there. Then 
I hafto think of the one thing — Patience. When 
you have mastered Patience, you are free. All 
well here. My sores are getting better fast. I 
have wanted to work lots lately, since I was in 
bed, but I could not. I lost so many ideas in 
bed. Beds are a curse. I love you, Comrad. 
We need to be together. 

Your old Pal. 

Sunlight Pal: 

A wounderful sun. A little late in getting up. 
The sun was out full — a wounderful breakfast 
and a wounderful bowl of roses. 

Every morning gets greater. The coming to- 
gether again gets closer. Separation is a great 
thing! You find that when it comes. It will be 
so big and wounderful to. come together on the 
shores of the sea. The trains on the Pere Mar- 
quette line have a draw to my heart; the whistle 
is so wounderful. . . . To have a bath in the 
salt water and not in old Lake Erie. ... It was 

[60] 



JOHNS THINGS 



another wounderful night with Fred. He has 
done so much for me this time that we have been 
away from each other. 

He is so wounderful if you can get to him. I 
think I have got right to him to the heart. I am 
awful lonesome for you and the sea. 

I walked to the train track with Fred this morn- 
ing. It was like the day you were going away. 
I felt it was nearing the last walk up the old Lane. 
Fred has the same feel. It swept over us — a free 
feel ; it was almost too much. 

How is your Sisity-list coming? Mine is 
great. It is hard to get along without you here. 
Old Abe was drafted, and we don't know when 
we will see him. The sea and sunlight sweeping 
in the open door of your work room! We will 
sure have some grand times. We will get horses 
and have some more of them Moonlight rides. It 
will be great to hit the old Tie path Itself — with 
the * Welcome Mulligan and the f Onerbel Chas. 
Lip ton under our arms. The smell of the burn- 
ing bark and a caben in the Rockies! Oh, the 
open road. Life is Life on the old Road. 

That canyon must be a wounder, and the sea 
and the misty mountains and the brown hills. 
You have it all. Oh man, that is the country for 
everything. 

I keep high for our meeting, Comrad of the 
Road. 

* Frying Pan. f Teapot. 

[61] 



THE HIVE 

Prose Settings 

i 

the red sunset. 

The red sunset Died away like the close of a 
forest fire. 

The Dusk ran through the mountains like a 
scarf of blue. 

The Moon and old Jupiter took the Open Road 
together. 

The others came out of the everlasting Blue 
Deeps. 

II 

THE DESERT NIGHT. 

The man at the camel corral was fixing the 
camels for the desert. Other men were waiting 
at the front of the Temple. Another came for- 
ward with four camels, a pack-beast and two rid- 
ers. Then all were off over the Sun Betin Sand. 

Nothing but Sai>d and Harizen. Only the 
Arab who was ahead on the Old Camel knew the 
way. 

They went on and on over the Everlasting 
Sand, the Sun Betin Sand. 

in 

PINES. 

The great wood is the Pines. The very whiff 
of them gives you the breath of Nature, the great 

[62] 



JOHNS THINGS 



Mother of the planet, the mother of Love. Her 
breath is the breath of life and love, and the 
Mouziek of the world. 

Treas (California) 

Treas are grate. They are so wild and woun- 
derful. There is so many kinds here. The trea 
I love best of them all, is the U. K, Liptes. It 
is fragran; it has the sun and the erth all flowers 
and the swaying beauty of its great youth. I 
loved it from the first. It is beauty that stays. 

I went up to a grove the other day and along a 
little lone path— the mist and odor of them lin- 
gering in deep shadows. My feet broke the deep 
silences and a Voice came and spoke soft to me: 

"If you listen long enough you can hear " I 

think it was my Master speaking, for a glow came 
around me, after He had spoke. 

The Song of the Sperit 

Life is not any good until you forget your 
boddy; then you get all the power of living, but 
you can't do anything that you feel like doing. 

Lether: 

All lether has a mystery in it. It is the ani- 
mal's mystery. The misteks of the other world 
know it, and try to tell us. I have been told but 

[63] 



THE HIVE 



my mind has not received it. I will hafto wait 
until it does. I think I will know it all in a fue 
years. I will tell the rest of the world, if I hear 
it first. I would like to be the first to hear it. 

Stones: 

The whole erth was of stone. 

God thought that he would make it something 
good. He sent the Old Mother Nature down and 
she spent years and years, but she did not know 
what to put on it. She went up to God and He 
took her to a room, and showed her the things 
that He had to put on the Erth. 

They were sperits, so she got them one at a 
time and brought them down. 

In the mean time she was making other things. 
They were seeds and she planted these and they 
came up. It was wheat and barley and c ther 
things like that. The sperits became people and 
took them for food, and the old Mother is still 
putting things and bringing her sperits on the 
Erth. This world is just about filled. 

The Sperit 

At night the Sperit goes to see God. It gets 
fresh to make the boddy fresh every morning. 
This is what keeps you clean. If you were all 
clean, you would not die. You go thru a hard 

[64] 



JOHNS THINGS 



life and what is not clean is burned off, and then 
you are pure to go to heaven. You rest then 
until you are ready to come and be a saint. 

Alone 

The sun beat hard upon the rocks. 

I was alone in the Power of the rocks. Noth- 
ing was moving. 

I was Alone. My Sperit was alone. 

It was the loneliest place in the world. 

No animal of any kind, not a bird or a snake 
— alone. 

Nature did not even have cells of thought. 

The power of the rocks was holden me there, 

A thought came over me that I had never 
known Home. 

All of a sudden Nature spoke, and I was free 
from everything. 

I came back to the Father. 

Equals 

There is a greatness in a man that treats his 
horse like his brother. A man is a beast when he 
beats his horse. He is of a lower Brivahen* than 
the horse. The man who says to his horse that 
he is his equal, is a great man, a master of ani- 
mals. 

* Vibration. 

[65] 



THE HIVE 



Beauty 

When the New Race comes, there will be 
beauty — real beauty. Down thru the ages peo- 
ple have talked of beauty, but they have not seen 
it really, yet. It will come with the New Race 
— beauty in everything — in the body, in writ- 
ing, in talk, in love. Not love one, but all. The 
younerverse Lovers will not only love each other, 
but they will love all. This war is the great clean 
up of the world. After it is all over, and the 
troops come all home together, there will be the 
great New Race waiting for them with open arms 
— then all will be real beauty. 

The Hold Up and the Get Away 

• . . It was the first time Denver Bill had come 
in without a cigarette in his mouth. They 
wanted to know why he wasn't smoking, but they 
didn't ask. 

He ordered the same drink and took it fast. . . . 
He chucked the chair over, grabbed the tellfon 
off the table and gave "Hlo." 

He said, "Horse up here in five minutes." 

It was there. 

He was out of town in a minute more. 

Denver Bill stopped at a cabin where he had 
made ponmets * to rob a train at 7 :45, and it 

* Appointment, 

[66] 



John's things 



was now 6:10. His friend was there. They 
jumped on their horses and rode a quarter of a 
mile. The train whistled around the curve. 

There was a shout. Denver called: "Stop 
that engine !" 

It stopped slow. ... Bill murdered the engi- 
neer, and then flew thru the train of cars. He 
grabbed the fifty pound gold box and jumped 
thru the window. A shot rang out. 

Bill was pincked. 

The man that he had come with played dirt on 
him because he went off with the gold. Bill 
crawled across the field and laid in the hay stack. 

He rolled the first cigarette of the day. 



Letter to the Abbot (from California) 

Dear Old Wife : 

How are you coming? I was just up over the 
hill behind us, getting two wounderful qwortz of 
golden honey. How is your type mill pumping 
these days? I got a new story in my bean: — 
Have an old fisherman that takes those forks and 
goes after crabs — have him find a pot of pearls 
instead of crabs. — Think if it is done right it 
would make a wounder. 

When will you be out here? We will lead a 
pack trane over the mountains! Oh, that is the 

[67] 



THE HIVE 



old open road ! Pack mules, they mean it to me 
— a line of mules in the mountains and a couple 
of saddel horses ! That's the life. 

I hope you have changed your mind about them 
airaplanes. I do not like the Idea. But, old 
man, it is for the best, and nothing is a mistake. 
Take it as it comes. Write soon, and make the 
pages fly like dust to me. I need all that I can 
get. 

Last night was our first bit of rain. Slept in 
an open window where my face was sprayed all 
night with the wounderful cold drops of spring. 
When I got up, I was feeling better than I ever 
did before. I was all relaxed. I lay a long time 
just in the wounder of the wounderful free air and 
rain. I got up and went down and washed in 
more of the soft rain, and ate and went outside to 
come down to my work shop. I stood in the 
wind. Everything around me was so wounder- 
ful. All the trees and flowers were brighter. 
The hills were a little damp. The birds were 
playing and drinking in the rain. The ray of sun 
was just coming over the hill. I could almost 
hear the breathing of the grass and erth. It was 
like a song, the great song of spring and breath- 
ing of the world. 

That is the way that the new generation will 
come in after the world is washed and all coun- 
tries are one. A Boy, young and clean, will come 

[68] 



John's things 



in, whistling and breathing a Song of the New 
Race. 

Your Comrad. 



Another 

Well, Wife: 

Here I am pumping a little more of my vocab- 
ulary at you. I think that I will go into the 
ocean and have a swim. It's dulce on my wounds. 
What I want to tell you is about an old sea loafer 
here — a big, black dog. He isn't any kind of a 
dog — nothing but a world-man-dog, he is. He is 
a lover of the sea and sand. He goes down with 
us every day. He is a pal for the road. He 
can't follow the saddel like Jack, but he can shore 
be a frend. I have lerned him and he has lerned 
me. We stick close. 

Well, pal of the sea and saddel, I am getting 
awful lonesome, but I am with you all the time. 
I need your old paw. I shore keep high for the 
Spring Coming. We will have a shack back in 
the hills all alone, and drink tea and talk. Don't 
it sound good? I won't forget it either, not until 
we have it. We have planned it for many ages, 
and we will hafto have it — old pal of the moon- 
light rides. 

I am close and always your Comrad. 

[69] 



6 
VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 



STONESTUDY particularly is a shop 
for writers. A man is at his best in 
writing to the one who pulls the most 
from him. The thing is to pour out. 
The pursuit of happiness is a learning how to ra- 
diate. Happiness itself is radiation — incandes- 
cence. 

You say you write to the world. A compos- 
ite? An abstraction? These will not draw forth 
your best and greatest. . . . You pass a thousand 
faces in the town, and are suddenly torn by one? 
Do you think that the unmanifested, upon which 
the thousand faces sleep so far as you are con- 
cerned, is capable of bringing out your wisest or 
tenderest expression, as is this one face pressed 
against the very window of your habitation? 

As a workman, as an artist, as a player, one 
must give his best, one by one, to individuals first, 
before he arouses the force to set the table for the 
world. ... It is important for the young writer 

[70] 



VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 

to answer exactly certain listening attitudes. I 
think, in a story mood, of the shepherd fires — the 
endless droning tales of Persia and Palestine — 
camel bells, bearded men in white hoods, 
occasional weary movements of women in 
the tent openings as the evening passes to 
dead of night, The tale-teller is making his 
listeners see more or less dimly something 
he sees— something he has heard and visualised, 
better yet, something he has lived. The finer his 
telling the more completely he has lived it. The 
more listeners pull from him, the more excellent 
his animation, his art. A speaker, accustomed to 
give himself spontaneously to an audience, said: 
"If I don't give you what you want — if I am not 
at my best to-day — remember it's apt not to be all 
my fault." 

Soil and seed in all things. 

We prepare ourselves with much misery and 
massed experience to tell our story of life. How 
strange that we should not have reckoned with 
the fact that all this preparation is only half. 
. . . Really, it is as important to think to whom 
one is writing as what to write about. I've been 
afield with many young men, soldiers and the like. 
Their best and highest moments afield were spent 
in writing home, or possibly to the girl they left 
under the beeches or sycamores. We should 
write a myriad or two love letters, before we are 

C7i] 



THE HIVE 

ready to write for the world. ... By writing 
and dreaming and travelling and living toward 
the one, we learn how to focalise our forces. Hav- 
ing done that, we are ready to diffuse, to radiate. 
Sooner or later the one point will be taken away. 

Don't be distressed; it is only for the time. 
But the love we have learned with one must be 
turned upon the many. It's all a love story. 
The whole universe is that. The stillness of the 
sun in relation to the planets tells the first story 
of radiation — love a cosmic force, not a senti- 
ment — all one big, brave tale. . . . The real 
priest is trained to draw out, to furnish under- 
standing, — inclusion. One can talk well to one 
who includes him. As professional essayists and 
story-tellers, we are only beginning to learn that 
we must talk or write to some one greater than 
ourselves, to set ourselves free. 

The wonderful power of letters begins and ends 
just here. . . . Write your story or your essay to 
one who contains you — to one who draws your 
best, to one who sets you free. You can ascertain 
your relation to another by your mood as you 
prepare to write. The more you practise the art, 
the more sensitive you are, the more you realise 
that no two moods of yours are the same, as you 
write to different people. One draws humour, 
one irony, one a tendency to exaggerate, another 
deeply to be serious and reformative. This should 

[72] 



VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 

reveal the whole secret. Choose your complement 
for the portrayal of a mood. 

The thing we call our style is merely the evi- 
dence of that which we have chosen to work to- 
ward, plus our particular personality. We should 
work to that which sets us free. Certainly one 
cannot be free in another's form. There are 
fixed vehicles for expression — novel, essay, poem, 
infinite departments of each, but the fact remains 
that no workman or artist or player can be ut- 
terly himself, who remains in the forms laid down 
by those who went before, or in forms prescribed 
by the generation he undertakes to express himself 
through. 

No good workman ever accepts things as they 
are. To be the workman unashamed, he must be 
considerably beyond his generation in culture and 
acumen. He therefore finds the beaten paths — 
which are the easy paths for the many- — the most 
irksome paths for himself. He grinds long and 
hideously against the things that are, and thus be- 
comes formidable, since grinding makes the edge. 
The dullest part of the axe is held the longest 
against the wheel. 

Bit by bit, as the consciousness of the chosen 
workman expands under years and ordeals, he 
casts off all the shackles, forms and prescribed 
nonsense of the trivial and material-minded. He 
breathes deeper with each unbinding, until he 

[73] 



THE HIVE 



reaches the fair eminence upon which lies the 
priceless secret of all expression: 

That there is no law for the pure in heart. 

He reaches this point through many slaveries, 
and yet a child can be taught the secret. The 
child must also be taught, at the same time how- 
ever, that the world is wrong and inferior in all 
its views; otherwise the child will not have 
stamina enough to stand against the opinions of 
all elders of all times, much less those who sit at 
the same breakfast table. Verily, the thing that 
Rodin and Balzac and Carpenter and Hugo and 
Chavannes and Nietzsche and Whitman gave 
their prodigious vitalities to learn, before their 
real work began, — can be taught to the child, but 
the child must find his faith in his own spirit and 
some true teacher to set him free. 

In the later aspirations beyond professional 
workmanship for the world, the Players achieve 
that master freedom which detaches itself entirely 
from causes and effects in materials. They work 
as do those who are ambitious, yet refuse to tie 
themselves in the least way to results. They work 
to their Masters, to the Unseen. . . . All of 
which is pure and perfect liberation, but requires 
one trained in building with spiritual causes and 
effects. We seek to furnish this training for a 
few who are ready. It is the way to the inmost 
and the uppermost in all art and mysticism. We 
are set free here as expressionists of various kinds 

[74] 



VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 

by writing or painting or playing to those we 
hold clearer than ourselves. We wouldn't be 
writing if we could be with them in the flesh — 
how clear that is! The fundamental processes 
of our picture-making are quickened by our yearn- 
ing. Here we touch an old and curious law, that 
you must have separation for the true romance. 

We learn to mass life into pictures or tones or 
tales. . . , All that we do well shortens the 
grade for those who receive. If they are quite 
ready, they won't have to make the mistakes we 
did — mistakes painful at the time, but out of 
which we make humour now. 

A man brings a gift when he brings forth a' good 
tale. He has done something with the worn-out 
tools of incident and experience which hasn't been 
done before. To do it well his telling is dependent 
upon his audience. His telling will be different 
for each listening group. The greater the artist, 
the less alike will be his methods of approaching 
different friends or comrades. Each will bring 
from him a different tone, a different look to his 
eyes, a different grip of hand, and different order 
of unfolding his genius. . . . 

The most perfect bits of writing we have from 
the group of our greatest novelists — is either in 
the form of letters or parts of work inspired by 
the influence of a woman's heart — some romantic 
and one-pointed outbreathing of their souls to 
one. . . . The great creative producers rarely 

[75] 



THE HIVE 



found steady human companionship in one 
woman. No flesh was starry enough to endure 
their idealisation; the break of their picture was 
often the shattering of life itself. Experience 
forces us all at last to take our idolatry from that 
which changes — to continue our lessons of love 
toward the Unseen. Lovers of the New Race 
seem to have learned the agony of trying to find 
all in each other, of trying to find the universe 
eye to eye. They realise at once that man and 
woman are but the two earth points of a tri- 
angle; that they safely may rear their passions and 
their transfigurations only to the pure point of 
union above. . . . 

A man has found something when he cries 
"Eureka!" He loves something, when he pours 
out his heart to it. The first great struggle of the 
real workman is to find a form that contains him 
— a form of expression that will not maim his 
dream. It is never the form that has held an- 
other, that has sufficed for another artist. A let- 
ter is one way to freedom. A writer's style should 
set him free. 

The enduring aphorisms and tablets and dis- 
courses of the Masters have been spoken to their 
beloved few. A man's sealed orders in the world, 
his occult transcriptions from above the world, 
come in the form of personal messages. Great 
documents of the future shall be written this way. 

r 76 1 



VALUES OF LETTER WRITING 

We write many personal letters. One of my young 
comrades has the idea to gather together names 
of a score of mill-girls in New York or some- 
where, and write her heart to them — less to try 
to help them, than to ease her own heart, to tell 
her love for them. Radiation — that is happiness. 
Mill-girls have been a dream of hers. She is full 
of force to pour out. 

Incandescence is happiness. All expression is 
happiness. Happiness is creative. To work, to 
express, that is to radiate. The object is as im- 
portant as the thing that aches to go forth. 
Choose the form that sets you free. To each his 
form. 

A tireless woman asked how she might serve. 
Her lover was lost in Flanders. We told her to 
write to the soldiers— to write her heart out in 
letters to soldiers— that she would save lives and 
start great dreams and bring the gold back to 
many grey mists— to be Mary the Mother, the 
saint, the dream of the film-eyed fighting men — 
to love them through the heart of her beloved. 
That is what focalisation leads to — to draw forth 
the great energies from our souls, to set us free, 
first to one, then to the world. 

We learn to love the one — in order to give this 
love to the world. We learn to love in matter 
for the moment, in order to become consummate 
artists and players in the soul stuff that cannot 
die. Again and again, through possessions and 

[77] 



THE HIVE 



personalities — missing, destroyed or moved away 
— we learn to take the force of our outpouring 
from the mutative to the changeless — making a 
divine bestowal at last of a clinging human need 
— lifting from the idolatry of the flesh, which en- 
closes all pain, to the love of souls which sets us 
free. 



[78] 



7 
THE NEW DANCING 



I HAVE found true North Americans. A 
woman of twenty-seven, a mother (with a 
mysterious man somewhere) and a girl- 
child with the calm and power of Joan 
come again. ... I needed a change, was tired of 
my house and my voice— close to the end of all 
human interest that morning as I set out for a 
walk up the edge of the Lake On and on walk- 
ing, until I came to the little girl on the shore. 
She was making a frowning man in clay. She 
asked me if I were the Crusader, but answered 
herself while I was hoping to fit the dimension of 
that fascinating title. She had decided that I 
wasn't. 

North Americans — I think of them so again 
and again — something great and calm and deep 
and beautiful, something arrived, at last, from 
all the fusion — en rapport with nature, children 
of the light, living and abiding constantly in the 
essences of sunlight — with the humour and cer- 

[793 



THE HIVE 

tainty of Mother Earth about their ways — the 
cleanliness of earth and the sweetness of golden 
light in their house and mind. . . . 

Mind you, I had walked forth as one would 
wade out to sea in the path of the moon — actu- 
ally yearning for a better land than this. . . . 
There on the shore, after hours, was the child — 
her eyes turned to mine, putting me into the 
enchantment of the wise — stilling hate and ennui. 
We had words together, the great awe of life 
stealing over me again after many days. Her 
hand stretched forth to take me to her mother 
(this day called the Lonely Qut.en, for they live 
in an enchanted story-book). A climb to the 
top of the bluff and into the most fragrant and 
godly lane, a low house in the distance in the 
shelter of beeches — solitary and isolate beeches 
sheltering a human house, built for six shine long 
ago. Many pages would not tell of the lane and 
the house, the lawn and the hives. ... I want 
to touch the core of this inimitable pair that took 
me in — poor but dining upon the perfect foods, 
so poor that they make and dye the lovely things 
they wear — a kind of holy handiwork everywhere 
— perfume of summer in the house and in the 
heart of it a deepdelved peace where broods a 
sort of lustrous dream. 

The child is but seven — that is, her body and 
brain are but seven. Her talk with her mother 
is the talk of a pair of immortals. . . . Wheat 

[80] 



THE NEW DANCING 



bread and butter for supper, peaches of the moth- 
er's canning — a last jar, she said, with comb- 
honey for sweetening and golden cream on top. 
It was a repast for the mountain-top where demi- 
gods stray — all miracles about us, Apollo just 
putting his steeds away, Vulcan smoking sombre 
and wrathful in tne distance. 

Can you see me sitting down to supper in a 
true handmade house, at the head of a God-made 
portal to the lake (the lane is nothing less) in 
a grove of white beeches — lingering gold on the 
vines at the window, the murmur of hives in the 
air, and these two mystic presences subduing their 
radiance to sit with me? . . . There's a little can 
of tea that is opened the last thing after the table 
is spread; the brass kettle begins to sing, and the 
mother hovers over — a kind of sacred rite, all 
this — then the dancing water is poured over the 
leaves and the room softly fills with the air of far 
archipelagoes. Roses of Ireland and France are 
in the room. Tearoses — some daughter of poetry 
must have named them. 

. . . Still I am telling you about things — not 
about them. I thought I should write you what 
they axe, yet the longer I sit here, the more testa- 
ments of their adorable lives appear, but their 
spirits draw farther apart. . . . There is never 
a drone of talk where they are . . . sentences and 
silences, the myriad voices of evening stealing into 
the hushes between. ... I must get down to 

[81] 



THE HIVE 



earth again. I must begin with the grass and the 
shore and the magic which began when the child 
turned up to me from the frowning clay. . . . 

I should like to report them moment by moment 
— to make you see, but there is a fixed purpose 
in this chapter. Sitting apart from them that first 
night, I contemplated the North America of the 
future — a kind of dream that nestles within a 
dream — the Great Companions, superb men and 
women, the vastness of leisure, the structural 
verity of joy, a new dimension in the human 
mind, a new colour and redolence in the light that 
plays upon the teeming world. Not for years 
had I been so near to the dithyrambic. ... I 
went out into the dusk and smoked a machine- 
made cigarette — not for worlds would I dese- 
crate that room. I returned drowsy — opened the 
casement windows wide to the stars. As I put 
out the lights, the sense came to me that the 
little room was as fragrant and sweet as a new- 
woven basket. 

... I awoke to low singing. The room was 
grey and seemed to lift with me, and the walls 
to widen. It was as if I had caught the old 
house just waking from a sleep of its own. The 
phenomenon of the singing lived in my mind. 
I don't know the song — a rapid bird-like improv- 
isation possibly — two voices hushed, but a vibra- 
tion of clear liquid joy. I went to the window. 
The earth was still asleep — a pearl-grey world 

[82] 



THE NEW DANCING 



of dripping trees in a kind of listening ecstasy — 
two beings below on the lawn — a lawn that was 
grey with dew. It was like looking down upon 
a cloud from the Matterhorn. These two beings — 
one in a veil of rose, one in a veil of gold — were 
dancing upon the cloud, dancing bare-armed and 
limbed, their voices interpreting some soft har- 
mony that seemed to come from the break of 
day upon the sphere. 

It was not for me — yet I could not draw back 
from the vines. I brought only thankfulness to 
it — sharing the joy in the dim of a room, in the 
dim of a mere man's heart. Yet all I could con- 
tain came to me from the mother and child. 
They knelt in the grass, the song more hushed, 
bringing up to their faces and shoulders hands 
that dripped with the holy distillations of the 
night — -a wash in dew and day, their song a prayer, 
their dance a sacred rite. ... I should have 
thought it the gift of dreams, but there was a 
starry track of deep green across the lawn, where 
their bare feet had broken the sheen of dew. 

... I dwelt with souls — that was the truth. 
I sat at breakfast with souls, dew-washed, speak- 
ing to each other and to me from that long road 
of life which we lose for a squalid by-way when 
we put on the garments of the world. . . . They 
talked again about what the birds hear in the 
morning. They said that what the birds sing 
is their interpretation of the great song of day- 

[83] 



THE HIVE 

break — that the earth does not meet her Lord Sun 
in silence. . . . And then I knew that the song 
I heard was their interpretation — think of it — 
a child of seven eating buttered toast. 

And I knew that power is a song — that the 
singing of the kettle is the song of steam, that the 
inimitable fsing of an electric burner when the 
current first charges through, is the awakening 
song of steel and carbon to their native capacity 
and direction. The same is in the heart of a boy 
when he finds his task — the same is in the order 
of a master and in the making of his poem. . . . 
These two hear it — the song of Mother Earth 
as the floods of light pour out and over her from 
the East. 

Here was a mother who knew how to play. 
She had launched somehow into a sphere of her 
own making — doubtless having found life of the 
world insupportable. I had thought much about 
bringing up children, about unfolding the child, 
and here it was being worked out with brimming 
joy. '. . . It was all too natural to be called edu- 
cation. It was nature — it was liberation, rather 
— a new and higher meaning of naturalness. 

I was almost afraid to speak. The life here 
seemed so delicate and delightful that comments 
would bruise the fine form of it. . . . They 
played together — that was the point. Play is a 
liberation of force — great play is ecstasy. In 
it one rises to the stillness of production, wherein 

[84] 



THE NEW DANCING 



one bathes in mystery and potency and all com- 
monness is cleansed away. Those who reach this 
stillness are the great beings of the world. 

When we finally open ourselves to any subject, 
we find intimations of it everywhere. I found 
presently that all the voices of the New Age had 
designated the magic of the dance. It seems al- 
most dull to declare that I do not refer now to 
the dance as it is taught and used and exploited 
as a social accomplishment, but that in which 
the personality is subdued and quiescent, quite as 
absolutely as it is in all great moments of produc- 
tion. One must give oneself. Music carries the 
sensitive soul into its own mystic region. A 
rhythm within answers to the external rhythm — 
the two meet and mate — the fusion is bewildering 
beauty. 

As in all creativeness, the first law is spontane- 
ity. 

The great dancers of the future will hear their 
own music — possibly give voice to it as they give 
their body to the rhythm. There shall be no exact 
interpretation of song or sonata — at least, not 
until absolute genius interprets the exact figure 
of each tone-set. This is impossible in a world of 
mutation. Accordingly, one who establishes a 
series of movements to accompany a certain har- 
mony, misses the meaning of the divine improv- 
isations which is the essential beauty of the New 

[85] 



THE HIVE 

Age dances. One should dance as freely as one 
called upon to speak. And one will neither speak 
nor dance greatly by prearrangement or following 
any arbitrary form. 

The very tone of the voice is different and 
deeper when one is caught in the spirit of spon- 
taneity. The prime object of the new education, 
which includes dancing, is to set the soul free. 
Music is one of the master-lures to call forth the 
sleeping giant. 

One night a stranger* came to Stonestudy. She 
said she was called by the way we were doing 
things, and that she hoped she had something to 
bring to us. . . . The next morning at daybreak, 
down on the shore, I saw stars and circles of young 
women and girls folding and bending together 
in exquisite tones of colour and song. Her gift 
was the new dancing. Over night she had cap- 
tured the young people, bringing them a new joy 
in the world. For two or three months she remained 
with us and has since established classes east and 
west — life given to the message of beauty. With 
us her expression and magic has endured. 

There is no way more swift to merge in the 
universal, than by the response to music through 
movement. Not dancing, which is a response 
to time in music more than to rhythm, but the 
actual blotting out of self, a spiritual exaltation 

* Helen Cramp. 

[86] 



THE NEW DANCING 



which many religionists have sought and few at- 
tained. 

The means is very simple; nothing strange or 
peculiar. It is the dropping of the human will 
so that the music may flow through. One does 
not move to the music then; one is moved by it. 
The objective mind ceases to operate and through 
the larger consciousness absolute Beauty streams. 
The response to the music may be totally different 
with several pupils, but where the dancer is really 
lost to the objective world, the movement is al- 
ways true and satisfying to those who watch. 
This is easy for those who are close to Nature and 
God, but it is fraught with difficulties for those 
who are over-mental or who have been terribly 
repressed. In many ways the will is man's high- 
est asset and it requires a supreme effort of the 
will itself to drop the objective consciousness. 

There is a technique of the dance to be sure, 
but it is designed only to free the body so that 
it may be a purer channel for the music, and to 
facilitate the effacement of self. Physical strength, 
agility, beauty as mere beauty, are never sought, 
but only the revelation of eternal harmony. 

There is rhythm throughout Nature. Man often 
moves less gracefully than the higher mammals. 
He has opposed his will to the law of the universe, 
for centuries abusing his ancient right, but through 
music he may realise again the harmony of all. 
The dancer is radiant with the splendour of the 

[87] 



THE HIVE 



infinite and there comes an ecstasy into the spirit, 
of those who witness the transfiguration— the hush 
that one feels only before the highest art and 
purest religion. 

It is reasonable to suppose that those who dance 
must bring back with them into every-day living 
something of the beauty of those exalted moments 
when they touch "the white radiance of eternity." 
Here is natural education, natural religion — a 
practical mysticism, the merging of self in the In- 
finite with a consequent fitness for daily living. 

So the dancing of the New Age is but a differ- 
ent form of contemplation and production, by 
which the Soul becomes the creature — for the 
period achieving that blessedness which is above 
time and space, and dwelling in that dimension, 
where goodness, beauty and truth are one. 

The new dancing is "in the air." Like vers 
libre and all New Age realisations and creations, 
its first essential is freedom. This is the meaning 
of the word Democracy — equality, liberation. The 
very spirit of all that is new demands freedom. 
The deeper one penetrates, the lovelier the folds 
of this marvellous conception. There is no title 
for friend or comrade, for child or lover — com- 
parable to the assumption of equality. 

Equality — its power sings. It dances. When 
the last is said and done, we all want the same 
thing, if we really knew, — goodness, beauty and 

[88] 



THE NEW DANCING 



truth, one at the top. There is joy in the fine 
new conception appearing now in all the arts — 
freedom first and last, even to lawlessness at first, 
but that will right itself more swiftly than smug- 
ness, which has had its age-long and hideous 
trial. • . . To me, the house in the beeches slowly 
unfolds it all — the mystery of the cosmic peas- 
antry of the future — that fastidious poverty, that 
delicate plenty which is perfection. These two, 
mother and child, mean the new dancing to me, 
and the New Race beside. I have not dared to go 
again, because I build incorrigible dreams, and this 
one especially is dear. . . . Yet I often recall 
their loveliness together. 

The mother's beauty had turned to loveliness. 
It had more than the mystic chiselling of sorrow — 
it had passion, it had humour. ... I feel the 
need of telling you from time to time that I am not 
rhapsodising, the need of reminding you, how 
weathered and drab my mind was, when I went 
up the shore that day. She made me think of 
grapes and olives and laurel-boughs; she seemed 
the sister to the child. All about the two were 
subtle, pervasive, ever-changing tests of the power 
of the soul. The country people around did not 
think her extraordinary, much less beautiful. 
How much is revealed in that? Loveliness re- 
quires certain vision, an interpretative spirit, and 
thus it is protected from the vulgar gaze. These 
good country people carry upon their faces and 

[89] 



THE HIVE 



hands and persons picture-writing of secret sins 
and dreamless stolidity, and yet they are scandal- 
ised by this woman. You cannot imagine how 
sweetly it came to me that she had utterly lost 
the sense that she was outcast. 

A lamp burns at her door every evening. I 
don't suppose it is seen three times a month — yet 
the lamp burns. . . . There's a big wooden Cross 
in the room where they sleep — the child led me to 
it — a mat of grass before it, kusa grass, who 
knows? ... A great Cross, a much-worshipped 
Cross, with spike-holes, the broken edges worn 
smooth. . . . The child whispered to me that 
she had been brought (when she was too small 
to know) and placed on the mat at the foot of 
the Cross for her mother to find; also that she 
came when the white clover bloomed. 

... It is only this way, bit by bit, that I 
can make the picture. I have never before been 
so disturbed by the sense of inadequacy. The 
light about their heads is all diffused like morning 
upon a cloud. 



[90] 



8 
OLD PICTURES IN RED 



THERE was a period between the second 
and third year of the war, when it 
seemed that the guiding, shielding spir- 
its of the planet were slowly being 
withdrawn — leaving only the mockery of goods, 
the chaos of multiplied things. But at the black- 
est, in the very hush of desolation, the new breath 
stole in upon us, a breath of lilacs on the chill, 
dank, wintry air. Many now stand arisen, wait- 
ing the flash that changes the world. . . . Five 
men were gathered in Stonestudy one evening; 
we talked of our parts, the best we could do in 
the cleanup. It was hard to look over the bar- 
riers at first; hard for an American to accept 
the fact that he dare not say what he thought, nor 
write what he thought. It was hard to realise 
that we were prevented from expressing what 
we thought, by the very forces that had drawn 
us into this deep trouble. We who are the dis- 
tant generation of a party of pilgrims and voy- 

[9i] 



THE HIVE 



agers who came to America to find a free country, 
were strange and intolerant at first, when we felt 
the yoke of Europe settle upon ancient scar-tissue. 

We discussed. 

A country is superb when one is unconscious 
of it, we said. One's country should be like one's 
health, part of the song of life. Suddenly to find 
the freedom of the past unremembered, the free- 
dom of the future unglimpsed, to hear the loathly 
low beat of talk from groups of frock-coated Ap- 
petites, with heavy half-dead legs and heads like 
pitching-quoits, settling our sacred future on the 
basis of steel and coal and margin and murder 
market; to feel ourselves clutched and borne for- 
ward with stub-nailed fingers in the stench of 
big business; black-garbed shopmen pointing the 
way to the ports, urging and shouldering other 
people's children to the ports of the gunboats, 
advising the efficacy of "Nearer My God to Thee," 
as a song for sinking ships, — we forgot at first in 
our own pain that this was merely the body of 
the Old strained to a cracking point by the resist- 
less growth of the New. 

Presently we grew kinder. ... In a way, the 
Old was the grim stepmother in whose house we 
learned how not to do most things; in whose 
kitchen we learned cleanliness, because of the 
vile example of her organic sloth; in whose 
walled garden we learned the peril and the pas- 
sion of Quest, because we loathed her long snor- 

[92] 



OLD PICTURES IN RED 

ing of afternoons; from the death of whose sects 
and schism-shops we set forth to find the unity of 
life; from the obscenity of whose loves we came 
into the first great cleansing hatred of our- 
selves. . . . 

No hatred now. Hatred is part of the Old. 
It has no part to unsteady the hands of the ^con- 
structionists. This New Race has come up in 
strong soil. The Old nourished and fertilised all 
its vitalities. The new green beneath the litter 
of dead leaves cries out under the decay, "You 
are stifling me! 5 ' but the plan of it all is wiser, 
for there is warmth still in the humus of the old 
to protect the new and the frosts may not be 
finished. 

More and more as the sense of big cleansing 
and chastening came home to us, the everlasting 
principles of reason and order and beauty also 
appeared out of the chaos and the pain. . . . 
They were saying in Europe that this war was a 
war without morale. We believed it would be a 
war with morale before the destruction was fin- 
ished. One of the cleanest dreams we had was 
that America would bring, with its guns and knives 
and instruments of flagellation, something of the 
almighty spirit of the human heart to light the 
blackness where the Pale Horse has passed. 
That's all morale is, and war without morale 
hasn't any cause or effect on the constructive side, 

[93] 



THE HIVE 



and will continue to destroy itself against itself as 
all such forces do in their madness. 

If any one concludes that we were a group of 
religionists gathered in Stonestudy that night 
it will be well to point out that this planet will 
be a whole lot more religious before war ends, 
and no one will be louder about it than the trade- 
mind everywhere. 

War brings death, and death enforces the faith 
of the human heart, and faith is one of a trinity 
(as we learned in Sabbath School and variously 
since) that inclines the heart of man to God. You 
take a loved object from the Seen and place it in 
the Unseen (thousands each day the soldiers pass) 
and faith is born of the agony of separation. The 
human heart forces a bridge across the abyss from 
the Seen to the Unseen. It's the old story of the 
bereaved turning to God. Saints are thus made — 
thus tenderness and purity come to be. 

Within the next ten years there will be hero- 
isms before our eyes — heroisms such as seers and 
saints and sages have dreamed of as the consum- 
mation of the human heart. And those who have 
lost most and mourned most will read the eternal 
joy of the Plan from the Book of God's Remem- 
brance. 

When you see the remnant of a race of people 
crying out that there is no God — then you begin 
to know what war means. When a country has 

[94] 






OLD PICTURES IN RED 

given its tithe of human blood, or one in five is 
gone — then you begin to know what an Austrian 
woman meant, when she spoke of the "horrible 
grinding of war and the answer of the women to 
man's cries of pain afield." . . . When peace 
brings a worship of materials and a dulness that 
cannot look beyond existing institutions — the end 
is war, and after that a sitting in black upon the 
ground. 

We didn't know what death meant before this 
war — but many have learned. The very word 
death has the sweetest sound of all uttered names 
to many a lonely heart to-day. We didn't know 
enough about death. We had the habit of think- 
ing this was all. The end of such thinking is 
war, and after that, a sitting in black upon the 
ground. 

When your heart is cleft in twain and one part 
stays on this side, and the other over the dim 
borderland- — there's a straining of eyes into the 
Unseen, a picture making out of the creative 
materials of human spirit. Life of the soul begins 
again— out of pain — always out of pain. 

We have not yet learned to accept life from the 
higher masters, Joy and Beauty. We still learn 
through Pain. We forget the meaning of death, 
even as we gather our things of death about us, 
and war comes along to remind us again. Always 
those who answer to Master Pain must look to 
death to find their relation to God. The faith that 

[95] 



THE HIVE 



comes with peace at last to the human heart, is 
energised by a love that crosses the abyss of life 
and death. ... A grand old teacher, Master 
Pain. When we know all his lessons, and take his 
hand from our shoulder, and touch it to our lips 
(for we shall know well his wonderful work when 
the time comes for us to part with him), then we 
shall find that he is not a black man at all — but a 
Sunburnt God. . . . 

Four at a supper table — a little child, its young 
mother, and the old father and mother of a grown 
son, who has just died for France. The old man's 
eyes roved from the child to its mother, back to 
the old woman, and lingered there, something 
rough and deep and wise in his look. The child 
suffered vaguely. There was much suffering in 
the house. . . . The young mother asked coldly 
if they could feel him in the room. Then just as 
coldly she asked if there were a God. Then she 
ran from the room with a cry like a night animal. 
The silent child began to weep. The old man and 
the old woman stared at each other and wondered 
what their daughter-in-law meant about him being 
in the room. 

A picture of the chastened world. 

The child turned from the strange, sad human 
beings to the fairies that played upon the peasant 
hearth. The child's mother had rushed forth into 
the twilight to find a vision or a memory or a 

[96] 



OLD PICTURES IN RED 

breath of God. The old man and the old woman 
looked so long at each other in the darkness — 
that the soul of the son of their flesh stood for 
one healing instant between them. Thus the en- 
during figures of the Unseen reveal themselves to 
those who have suffered to the end. 

The nations are but names to fight for. These 
battle-lines are for humanity's soul. If America 
is fighting for humanity, let it be with surgical 
calm and healing in her hands. Hate spoils every- 
thing. 

The babe knows a room; the child knows a 
house and looks out into a street; the youth learns 
the street and then the city ; the young man learns 
his country, but the man should learn the world. 
You can never be the great lover of America by 
hating the rest of the world; no human mind can 
see what is best, what is even good for America, 
when the interests of other countries are forgotten. 
No man's country ever suffered because he turned 
his love and service to the feet of humanity. 

The few who brought the real American impar- 
tiality to the European war in the first months, 
found themselves in the midst of the most chal- 
lenging chaos that ever reared its head to the light. 
Profound and tragic impressions followed each 
other. It became icy clear that the greater na- 
tions, as well as the pawns of the Balkans and the 

[97] 



THE HIVE 



Levant, were puppets alike, churned together in a 
great planetary cleansing. Every partisan path 
was found to be increasingly crooked the farther 
one advanced — and a sheer descent at the last. 
Any national point of view used to dupe the peo- 
ple into greater destructive energy, proved in itself, 
no matter how sincerely offered, as short-sighted 
and ill-founded as the hatred of two soldiers who 
meet between trenches and discover, as they gore 
each other to death, that their only basis for hos- 
tility is a different colour of coat. 

Studying Europe in those dark days, the un- 
prejudiced eye was in danger of having some 
truths torn down with the host of illusions. It 
was hard to hold fast to the fact that there was 
anything magic or holy about nations at war. 
Indeed, they seemed entities formed of groups 
of greedy men who wanted their way — in the 
main, groups of leaders devoid of vision and the 
spirit of fraternity, and careless of the welfare 
of the people, quite the same as many great com- 
mercial organisations. . . . The real enemies of 
any people are groups of men who want things 
for themselves. The real issue of the war has noth- 
ing to do with entities of this kind, nor with alli- 
ances of such entities, but with the painful groping 
consciousness of the peasant mind — its slow and 
torturous awakening to the fact that royalty in its 
utmost pomp and glow does not enfold God. 

The people must learn before they can be free. 
[98] 



OLD PICTURES IN RED 

Hitherto they have been duped by the nations; 
and the nations are now being duped by each 
other; but there is a greater plan at work — using 
men and nations alike,— a plan to do away with 
boundaries and hatred and preying, to strike the 
spear from the hand of man and leave it free to 
help his neighbour, to establish democracy in the 
place of imperialism, and fraternity upon the solid 
footings of the earth in the place of separateness 
and strife. . . . The new volume of human spirit 
already has been opened. We felt it that night in 
Stonestudy before lights out, — the first beauty as 
of a song across still waters. 

An American correspondent going home from 
the field in Europe "the long way around," met 
an old Persian Master on the road to Damascus. 
With the sage was his nearest disciple, also a Per- 
sian ; in fact, the young man was so loved that he 
had been changed from discipleship into sonship. 
This young Persian became very devoted to the 
American. They stood together for a moment in 
silence, when the time for parting came. The old 
Master drew near and said : 

"It is good to see you place your hands together. 
To me it is a symbol of the marriage of the 
East and West, for the East and West must mate. 
Long ago the East went up to God and the West 
went down to men. The East has learned Vision 
and the West has learned Action. These two 

[99] 



THE HIVE 



must meet and mate again for the glory of God 
and the splendour of earth. The East has lifted 
its soul to the hills and held fast to its memory 
of the Father's house. The West has descended 
into the folds of the valley, and won from agony 
and isolation its efficacy in material things. And 
now the mystic b looking down and the material- 
ist is looking up. Soon their hands shall join — 
like your two hands in mine — and there shall be 
great joy in the Father's House." 



[100] 



9 
STEVE 



STEVE and I were camping together for 
a few weeks on the Southern California 
strand. One morning he looked up from 
the pages of a book in his hands and 
remarked : 

"This fellow is one of us." 
The book was Youths by Joseph Conrad. 
"I haven't read a book for a long time/' Steve 
added. "There are three stories in this. I've 
read only one— Heart of Darkness — in fact, I 
haven't finished that. . . . You have to fall into 
this Conrad and be his — to get him. You let 
your mind open into a cup, and presently after 
six or seven pages, you find it brimming. If you 
fall into him deep enough, you get almost what 
he sees — not quite though. No reader ever does. 
But you get something intense, fascinating, a 
restlessness, a terror. You find that all your som- 
nolence and inertia has caught fire." 

There had been a ten minutes' rain at dawn. 
The smell of the tropics moved over the sterile 

[101] 



THE HIVE 



sand. It was cool, but there was no wind. The 
day promised heat. We had been up in Canada 
for the winter, and it was hard to believe that 
hot sunlight was free. A broad quilt of gulls 
and plover sat together on the shore waiting for 
the drying light or for the mist to rise, or the 
tide to ebb. . . . 

Steve resumed: 

"He tells about a boy who loved maps — who 
used to look for hours at the continents — thrill- 
ingly attracted to the darkest places, the patches 
still unprojected. There was one heart of dark- 
ness with a river winding through. He doesn't 
tell you the continent or the river, but there were 
elephants there. He should have called the story 
Ivory. . . . Years afterward, the man, worn to 
the bone from the world's lies, sets out to pene- 
trate this deepest black of the planet. He reaches 
the river and follows it for endless days, but the 
world has arrived. Some nation is there colonis- 
ing for Ivory — you don't know which. The story 
is told like that — unplaced in time and space. 
Really it doesn't matter what particular imperi- 
alistic tendency is at work. The fact is, he climbed 
the river into the ghastliest chaos. . . . 

"You get the deep green of the heart of the 
continent, the mournful brooding leafiness — the 
natives herded and distracted, more afraid of the 
blast of a river-steamer's whistle than of any 
kind of violent death. Death was familiar to 

[ 102] 



STEVE 

them. They were chained to labour, cast loose 
to die. Vultures swept the sky waiting for their 
limbs to fall still. There was the salty pester of 
fever in the air — men foolish with fever and heat 
— a haze of flies — white men burning out inside 
— oxidisation of human souls — a steady and hid- 
eous beat of death— devils of hate and violence 
and acquisitiveness — clerks making entries of 
Ivory — a nation's young men running through the 
jungles for Ivory — carloads of bright glass beads 
and painted calico for Ivory — all standards of life 
and career-building set upon Ivory — murder for 
that — lives lost, tribes shattered — the leafy heart 
of a fresh continent seared with the civil flame 
of greed — commodities dumped in river beds — 
mails that men would die for torn open by vandal 
hands — waste, perversity, nothing clean-cut even 
of crime, the horrible non-initiative of the mid- 
dlemen. . . . All this told with patient exacti- 
tude, but with indescribable intensity; told by a 
master-hand that trembles; with the control that 
one can only know who is sensitive enough to 
tremble. You feel a big man bending forward to 
make you see something that all but killed him to 
find out. You feel him scarred and sick, his heart 
leaking, because he found it all so hideously and 
stupidly rotten. It's a little picture of a trade war 
— that's the point — the war of middlemen — mid- 
dlemen turning to rend each other. . . . Heart of 
darkness— after that the light comes." 

[ 103] 



THE HIVE 



Steve opened and shut his fingers in the sun- 
light. The warmth was sweeter every minute. 

"This fellow sees it all/' he went on. "He's 
done a big job for me — for anybody who gives 
himself to the book. There's something immor- 
tal about being a workman like that — about any 
workman. That's why one wants to cast a weep 
after the passing hordes of middlemen. They 
can't do work. They don't even see the fog of 
human agony they've painted the world with. 
They are it. It is the old against the old. It's all 
about Ivory. They crucify for fossil." 

Steve was lighting up. 

"This Conrad brought back to me to-day a big- 
ger love for the workman. The starved and 
scorned inventor gets the best of it, after all — 
not in Ivory — but he builds something in him- 
self. He quickens something in himself that 
goes on in freed consciousness when the body 
falls. No, I don't insist that anything goes on 
in any particular way, but the deep moments of 
work somehow show a man that the best of him 
here is but a nexus between a savage past and a 
splendid future. . . . It's wonderful to be alive 
to-day. I believe there are secret agencies at work 
behind all the governments — that they are one 
at the top. I don't mean detectives, not intelli- 
gence or espionage bureaus. Potent, mystic, infal- 
lible forces. It doesn't matter. Some person or 
some group is holding the plan of the New Age. 

[ 104] 



STEVE 

"We're learning life as never before— plucking 
the deeper fruits and mysteries of pain. But 
one must go apart from the crowd to see. One 
must cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees 
the whole, not the part. All the war-lands are in 
pain. One sees only the part, when one is in 
pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. 
A few Russians see it all — a few in China — a few 
in India. Romain Rolland sees it all. This fel- 
low, Conrad, sees it all. . . . It's a pity if Amer- 
ica doesn't soon get the full picture. It'? worth 
seeing -" 

Ocean and sunlight and mountains. The world 
was a brimming cup. If a man could take all the 
beauty there was for him, he could never die. . . . 
We went over to the post-office of the little town. 
The business men of the place were coming in. 
The first mail had just been distributed. . . . 
Grocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real es- 
tate men, the man who ran the newspaper, fisher- 
men, barbers, lawyers — mainty fat and pleasant 
— children on the way to school. 

They were short-breathed and short-armed. 
They dressed in wool and wore heavy dark hats. 
I had never noticed before how short-armed the 
race of tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants 
are not so; painters and musicians have a tend- 
ency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to 
Steve. 

"The middlemen," said he. "They are tight- 
[105] 



THE HIVE 



ened throughout — ligaments contracted — contrac- 
tion taking place in the deeper weaves of mind, 
a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Con- 
traction, self-centering — that's what madness is. 
A man must sing, or weave, or build or make 
bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry 
ways. They hide their ways from one another, 
and afterward from themselves. They pluck 
no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do 
not become intimate even with the commodities of 
the earth — the very things they worship and pare 
margins from. They eat infamously, filch from 
each other. . . . It's all here — all that Conrad 
pictured in the heart of darkness. These are the 
sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth. They 
live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. 
These are the war-makers. . . . Their arms are 

twisting and shortening in to their navels " 

Sunlight streamed in through the open doors 
of the post-office. Motors going by drowned the 
soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the outer 
world trickled in through bits of conversation. 
Everybody had read the morning paper at the 
same time. No one thought of telling anything 
that his neighbour did not know. . . . Europe 
was starving — the President was ill — railroads in 
strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost of staples — 
France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion — 
England ... a voice — Germany choking in her 
own blood. 

[106] 



STEVE 

The tradespeople of the little town by the sea 
gathered in their bills and orders and advertise- 
ments and hurried back to their shops. Nothing 
astonished any more. There were no words for 
the world's woe — no ears for lamentations — no 
mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell 
dear all the time. We walked back to the shore. 

"I once saw a little town on a hill-side," Steve 
said. "A grand boot-maker was there, and a 
man who made clocks with such tools as he had — 
big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full 
days. Another man made furniture — perfect 
woods from the forest drying in his kilns and 
sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. 
There was a weaver and a potter there. The days 
were long and singing, full of labour and peace. 
No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every 
artisan had his apprentices. The age of the ap- 
prentices will come back — with a new dimension 
added " 

"Switzerland or dream?" said I. 

Steve smiled. "They are starting communities 
all along this coast," he said. "Many are on the 
quest of the town I saw." 

We sat down upon the sand again. The sun 
was higher. White clouds brooded in heaven's 
own daylight; white wings moved upon the sea. 
I was thinking about Steve and all he had said. 
What Conrad pictured in the dark continent 

[ 107] 



THE HIVE 



existed here in one of the cleanest small towns of 
America — an earlier stage of the same malignant 
disease. From the broad and beautiful vantage 
points of democracy and fraternity — every shop 
here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, 
a spectacle of moral decay and insensate devour- 
ing; every schoolhouse a place of dismal enchant- 
ment where competition was not only taught but 
enforced. Steve knew deeply well when he spoke, 
that the creative artist, the producer of every real 
and true and beautiful thing, comes into the power 
to express himself, in spite of such education, not 
because of them. 

One can laugh at all mediocre men occu- 
pying seats of the mighty and calling their dead 
gods to witness that they are right — but one who 
knows that the intrinsic gift of each child is the 
one thing in sunlight to be promoted, turns away 
a bit dismally from the spectacle of the standard- 
isation of the child mind — from the wholesale 
manufacture of middlemen by school system. 

Steve loves America. I know of no one who 
loves America more. He doesn't rise and cheer 
when the orchestra plays a questionable bit of 
verse and tune in a movie-hall where imagination 
is being put to death — but he believes in the vision 
of the Founders of America. He believes in the 
spaciousness and splendour of the American 
spirit; that the dream of a few mystics will tri- 

[108] 



STEVE 

umph at the last, and that the many will follow 
the dream of the few. He does not believe that 
the voice of the middlemen is the voice of God. 

It's hard to credit, but this young man does 
not hate one country to love another. He loves 
America because the dream of a new heaven and a 
new earth has a quicker chance for breaking 
through into matter here than elsewhere. He per- 
ceives the tissues of the senile and the obscene 
breaking down in America, under intense civil and 
martial and moral processes. He believes that 
this breaking down is essential before the building 
begins. He believes that the future will be built 
upon the thoughts of men who are great enough 
to stand apart from the dumas, from the cabinets 
and the senates, just now. As Steve sees it, all 
partisans have to do with the parts, and the parts 
of the partisans have to do with the Old, which is 
destroying itself — sense against substance, limb 
against limb, organ against organ. 

The young men of the New Race are born of 
a mating of the East and West. They are nat- 
urally intolerant of partitions. Steve is one of 
these. He isn't a spirit alone. He is a body and 
brain. He has stayed awake through the full 
night and day. He sees the planet in one piece. 
He has crossed all the rivers. He knows the 
young men of America. He is one of them. He 
loves America because he knows the rest of the 
world. He has friends among the Chinese young 

[109] 



THE HIVE 



men — among the young men of Russia and India. 
He says that all three have greater obstacles to 
overcome in getting the dream through, than we 
of America — that everybody will be singing it 
after the wreckage is cleared away. 

"America, Russia, India, China — they are 
lands, not pavements," Steve declared. 

He was looking across and to the south. The 
sun was a glory about us — all the background a 
tentative, swiftly passing thing, all but forgotten 
now, stilled by the rustle of the long, low white 
lines of the sea. 

"The New Age will redeem all the broad 
lands," he said, with a trace of a smile — "lands 
for meadows and fields and gardens — meadows 
for milk, fields for wheat, gardens for honey — 
the New Race is particular for the perfect foods 
— foods for the giant and the child — broad lands 
for the toilers — the great sea coasts for the dream- 
ers. . . • It's all a matter of taste," he added. 



[no] 



HEJIRA 



WE found we were a bit tied in the 
the Middle West, caught some- 
what whether we liked it or not, 
in the meshes of possession. Steve 
and I had liked it much out on the Southern Cali- 
fornia strand. . . . When one reads in the earlier 
book,* the stress that we put on building that big 
stone house on Lake Erie, this felicitous hejira 
may disconcert. 

The fact is, we wearied of possession. We 
found ourselves yearning for that beauty which is 
unconfined. We were athirst for new things, a 
different break of seasons and taxes. . . . The 
world was so full of people who could build and 
buy and own and insure, that we decided we 
should be doing the things that the others coulH 
not. We were glad to have built the house for 
the other fellow. We had to do it. We learned 
how to run it well, in and out — but it was a 
* Child and Country. 

[mi 



THE HIVE 



stone house. When a man builds a stone house 
with walls eighteen inches thick, he must leave 
a hole to get out; also he must be sure that he 
isn't building on his own chest. ... In true 
Hive spirit, we renounced at the highest moment 
of possession. 

The crowd cannot be seen by one who stands 
in the crowd. On the same basis a man cannot 
see the relation of his house to the road or 
garden from the inside of the house. The world 
must be regarded from outside to be seen 
as a whole. The New Race is determined to 
see it so. This outside is none other than the 
mystical viewpoint of all world artists and build- 
ers. 

One does not know what friends are, until one 
discovers that the secret of friendship is not in 
getting but in giving. No one knows what love 
is until he reverses all the laws that the many 
follow now. I do not mean lawlessness. I mean 
the higher law that is found at last by the quester 
after goodness, beauty and truth. We have to 
finish with the world as it is before we set out 
in quest of a better country. . . . We found that 
we had to become active servants of a finer ideal 
than householding at its highest. We determined 
to do more than to dream this ideal ; we set about 
to make a better country. At worst, we work for 
our children. 

It came to us many times before we moved 
[112] 



H E J I R A 

that we were forever done with things as they 
are; that we had come to the end of show and 
property-measure and hoarding; to the end of 
the love of self which destroys the vision for 
friendship ; to the end of domesticity which holds 
one's neighbour as prey or rival; to the end of 
civic identification, or relation with any federated 
commonwealth, which fancies its existence threat- 
ened by the prosperity of other political bodies. 
No heat about it. 

We came to the edge of the Lake in van- 
loads; we went away with bags. ... I turned 
from the eastern distance on the bluff, on one 
of the last days, and looked at the vined study 
and the big stone house, the elms so strong and 
green about it. I remembered the early picture 
of all this. It began from Stevenson's Treasure 
of Franchard, many years ago,- — how old Dr. Du- 
prez went out in the morning and tried grapes 
and plums with the dew on them, sniffing the 
perfumes of his own yard, dwelling in his own 
orchards. 

I remember one day before building that the 
man came to us about the young trees. He had 
pictures of them in books— blooms and fruits of 
such colours that nature would never be guilty 
of — all the fruits I heard of as a boy — white 
grapes that never grow in this country, purple 
ones that grow whether you care or not. . . . 

The trees were coming on now, many with 
[113] 



THE HIVE 



ripening fruit. The grove of elms was a matter of 
collateral, as the bank would say. The break- 
water had caught up thousands of yards of sand. 
It worked — the old struggle of wasting banks for- 
gotten until a greater storm. The honeysuckles 
that were planned to climb the bars of the study 
windows, had to be trimmed now for any light at 
all. The wistaria trailed admirably and imposed 
upon the front the sense of years. 

. . . We had planned to have all the fruits; 
some of the finest were now in flower. We came 
with many clothes, underwear and outerwear, wool 
and dark things. We left with a few light ef- 
fects in our hands — to find a place where white 
garments might be worn in peace. We came with 
a great idea of food — game and fishes, meats, 
poultry, many cans and vegetables and desserts. 
We went away with a taste for graham bread and 
butter — a spread of honey, a glass of milk. We 
came with a fear of disease for the children, fear 
of colds, fear of losing something, or having some- 
thing taken away, doubtless having the fear of 
death and accident. We went away with a clear 
idea of what death is and the advantage of it, 
children and adults alike. 

Young children rode the horse that had a repu- 
tation for being wild-spirited and very much a 
man's mount. We had seen the deep places of 
the Lake fill with sunshine. We came with para- 

[114] 



H E J I R A 

sols and awnings and protections against the sun. 
Most of us would like to have worn nothing 
but a breech-clout had the town permitted; and 
the only time we had found the world hard to 
bear, was the long grey Spring days of rain. 

Sunlight — it is closer to God and happiness 
and manhood and every delight than words can 
suggest. The more you know of it, the more you 
need; the more you love it, the more its myste- 
rious excellence unfolds. I know what sunstroke 
is, and what the sickness from heat is. It's a 
vile state of the body, or vile clothing that 
stifles the body. When one is well and has learned 
to come back to the Father of Lights — there is no 
fear in his heart. I used to wear a helmet and 
dark glasses, but no more — eyes stronger than 
ever. I look for the sun in the morning and stare 
up from the sand into his face at high noon. There 
is nothing the matter with sunlight. The sadness 
and the sickness is with those who bring their 
quilts and cloaks to hide it from their flesh. . . . 

It's all in synthesis. The end of bulk possession 
is pain. . . . We started in with many flowers. 
We ended with roses. It's all in the tea-rose. 
. . . By careful selection of thoughts over a little 
period, we can come into the joy of flowers in 
other people's gardens. There are brave men who 
allow you to walk in their orchards ; and there are 
many who work hard to raise fruits for a price. 

[115] 



THE HIVE 



There is much joy, if you really look at it, in 
building a house for another fellow. 

We start with the brute materials — beginning 
with the clay itself. Our cultivations become 
more intensive through the years. All life is so. 
We take the extract of a thing at last — a shelf 
of books where formerly we wanted a roomful — 
somebody's else little rented bungalow, where for- 
merly we wanted an estate. We realise, at last, 
that there is an essence to be obtained from the 
extract, an oil from the essence — a spirit at last 
from the oil. The whole story is in that — syn- 
thesis. Slowly, at last, we begin to set ourselves 
free. We descend into matter; learn its lessons 
and laws, rise like a plant through the darkness to 
the light, integrating force to meet and cope with 
the new and lighter element. I held up seven 
little books in one hand — weighing no more than 
a new novel. 

"It's all in these," I said to the Chapel. "One 
could put these in his bag and have it all." 

. . . And then at last, I went down alone and 
empty-handed to the shore, meditated on God 
with sun and sand and flowing airs. . . . All 
matter is scaffolding which falls away. A man 
thinks he builds a house for himself, but no sooner 
has he put on the last tile than death or the open 
road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out 
of it. He thinks he must possess, that he must 
hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers the stuff 

[116] 



HEJIRA 

of death about him. If he cannot rise, death cov- 
ers him for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of 
the care of his orchard, or his garden. It was all 
story to me. Dear R. L. S. He didn't dream of 
the work of the hand necessary to keep up an 
orchard, and have a connoisseur's joy for a few 
summer days of the year. He didn't tell of the 
parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, 
nor of the little winged migrators that sit on the 
hills, waiting for the potatoes to come up. The 
call comes to possess nothing. It had better be 
answered. 



["7] 



11 
THE SPECTATOR 



SOME of us here have swiftly reviewed 
certain old slaveries, that we may set 
free the children of to-day. . . . They 
do not have to make the same mistakes 
we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and 
twenty and thirty years younger : 

"Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you 
of pain or error or shortsightedness, of passion or 
pleasure, or anything that arouses or wears down 
body and soul. Only this I ask you — don't make 
the same mistakes I did. Let me give you the an- 
swer to a few petty and pestiferous lures. I can 
put you right on them. Begin now to learn your 
lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy 
way to get somewhere, but be a pioneer in your 
evils; be daring and fastidious and full-powered 
and discriminating in your faults! Above all, 
be impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let 
the winds of the world breeze through. It's all 
a Laugh." 

[118] 



THE SPECTATOR 



Every process of the world to-day is designed 
to take away that adorable love and listening of 
the child to its own soul. Streets, schools, trade, 
neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, charla- 
tans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in 
technic for one in the spirit of things; ten thou- 
sand teachers of the health of the body (and 
every one wrong) for one who shows the way 
to the single and sacred fountain of youth; in- 
numerable voices lifted in fly-dronings of instruc- 
tion, how to fill the bin and the brain, the 
bank and the bourse — how to have and to hold 
and to die holding, and to bury oneself in the 
midst of — for one who laughs and plays and dares 
to watch the world go by. . . . At last to be the 
Spectator ! 

I tell you now from much living that there is 
nothing here in the world that is worth fighting 
for, but the glad tolerance of events, sheer, laugh- 
ing joy in the Plan. . . . Every time you adjust 
your life to the standard of the world, you are 
doing something that is beneath your soul, and 
you will suffer for it, and be forced to retrace. 
Dress for the world, and the world will find its 
flaws in you. Work for the world according to its 
specification, and it will defile you. Enter into 
any of the competitions of the world and your 
face and your hands and task will be constricted 
by visible and invisible impediments and barriers, 
less than the real of you in every detail. Search 

[119] 



THE HIVE 



for health according to the laws of flesh alone, 
and it will elude you at every point, showing you 
all vanities and pits and pains. Search for beauty 
of face and body, and it will be the first thing 
taken. There is nothing in the world but to make 
the human divine — that is the job we are here 
for. 

To cease to hold is the beginning of invincible 
attraction; want nothing and the treasures of the 
world are yours. You cannot have health until 
you are ready to give up life here. Cease to cling, 
and that which was a body held apart from you, 
is suddenly a winged creature returning. . . . 
There is nothing here but the love story, and the 
power of that must be spiritual. The madonna 
of the future will look up, not down at the head 
upon her breast. Man must overcome mammon; 
Woman must overcome the mammal. The lovers 
of the future will look a little time in each other's 
eyes and much above to a Third who will come 
nearer and nearer for their adoration. . . • The 
friends of the future will sing in their Partings; 
they shall know the spirit and the breath of cam- 
araderie which knows no death. 

There is a tendency on the part of our young 
associates to be extravagant in their speech. Much 
that they see is beyond their capacity decently 
to express. A group of us was looking down from 
a high balustrade. Flowery vines were woven 

[120] 



THE SPECTATOR 



intricately against the face of the stucco below. 
We became conscious of an incredible whirring, 
so low that it was difficult to hear, and yet so in- 
tense as to give the thought of a distant seismic 
disorder., It was the invisible wings of a hum- 
ming-bird, flashing from cup to cup in the vines 
below. The child standing next to me said : 

"The sound has texture." 

It expressed something very real to me; yet 
there is not power in w r ords to portray the exact 
feeling. All the objects of nature have their 
spiritual dimensions also for those who dwell 
much in the Unseen. These unusual children see 
the material object merely as an outpost for a 
challenging mystery; while, to the material mind, 
the outpost is all, and the lavish adjectives and 
expressions of the former are deplored as gush 
or affectation. As a matter of splendid truth, the 
most marked and potent of all adjectives and 
expressions are pitifully inadequate to express the 
lustre and radiance which begins at the point 
where three dimensions end. 

The Valley Road Girl came into the Study one 
day, saying that this chapel book should be called 
The Hive. We all thought it a wonderful name 
to work toward, yet the unfolding of possibilities 
has been steadily interesting since that day. 

The inner sanctuaries of occult literature com- 
mend the students to look to the bees. The pat- 
tern of much that man has still to unfold from 

[ 121 ] 



THE HIVE 



his own soul, for his personal and communal up- 
lift, is already expressed in the hive. There is 
a period of larva, and a period of wings to each 
cycle. Such matters call to those of spiritual dis- 
cernment. One feels on the verge of great revela- 
tions for humanity, beyond the thing called death, 
as he studies this miniature model of a great de- 
mocracy. 

The most fascinating love episode I ever read 
was the Nuptial Flight in Maeterlinck's Life of 
the Bee. The majesty of winging to the sun, the 
falling back of the weaker-winged suitors, the 
commanding isolation of sun and sky, fusion un- 
der the mighty beat of the wings of the queen, 
the broken body of the male, the mother's return 
to the shadow and the labour of the generative 
wheel — magically, it all opened a vista to the 
great renunciations, the great passions and aspira- 
tions ahead for the human soul, great fusions of 
the future, marriages truly made in heaven, the 
inevitable trinity of all matings — the drama of 
love and death. 

For her one high noon flight in June, the queen 
toils through years. She brings back from that 
superb instant the swarming cities of the future. 
On and on, she unfolds her fecundity in the dark, 
a prodigious and Herculean labour; from the hu- 
man standpoint a task of intolerable pain and 
monotony. The queen's labour is scarcely more 
difficult than the tasks assigned to the hosts of 

[ 122] 



THE SPECTATOR 



workers, which appear to be denied any separate 
episode of emancipation. Yet, equally with the 
queen, they share the communal spirit; and no 
one who has stood among the hives at the end 
of a long summer day, and heard the song of 
bounty and deep-hearted content, can deny the 
peace that dwells among the myriad of skilled 
artisans, each with his perfectly appointed task. 

Bees appear to remember the light, while work- 
ing at the opposite side of the wheel. Men, as yet, 
are detached, lost in the heresies of self and strife. 
Only a few visionaries have peered beyond the 
petty reach of the optic nerve, to perceive that 
this, which we make so much of, is but the hell- 
portion ; that this appearance of ours in pounds 
is a mere dressing up in materials of earth to 
endure the dark and low vibration of the wheel's 
most downward sweep. These few visionaries, 
always singing the joy of the other arcs of the 
cycle, somehow keep the dream alive, — the dream 
that appears already to be the essential blessedness 
and magic of life in the hive. 

All mysticism seeks to teach us this single point 
which the bees seem to have learned so well — to 
transcend time and space in labour; to put off the 
sense of separation and strife, to hearken to the 
soul's own song of equality and sufficing days. 
We must be pushed to the last reaches of pain be- 
fore we learn this secret. We have to penetrate 

[ 123 ] 



THE HIVE 

the darkness before we earn this flash which swings 
wide the portals of joy. 

Joy is the most potent thing in the universe. 
The bee-queen mother weaves race after race of 
progeny out of the incredible dynamics of an in- 
stant's joy. Each cell that she fills with life is 
a living fragment of her nuptial feast. Fusion is 
ecstasy, parturition is pain. The many become 
one; that is heaven. The one becomes many 
again; that is earth and hell. Integration and 
diffusion — the same story told in the hives and 
ant-hills, in the strolling winds and swinging seas, 
in the hearts and marts of men, in matings every- 
where. 

The original idea was to use the title, The 
Hive, in relation to the happy intensity of Stone- 
study days, but our ideal grew to adapt to the 
name, because of its revelations in regard to the 
new social order; the pure and instant abnegation 
of the self to the community; the active accept- 
ance of the precept: That which is good for the 
one is good for the manjr, and that which is good 
for the many is good for the one. 

We cannot lose ouselves long in our own misery 
when we realise the glory of yesterday, and the 
more spacious solar adventure of to-morrow. We 
cannot continue to feel our own isolation when 
we perceive a brother in the eye of a stranger, 
when we perceive the sons of God in the eyes of 

[ i 2 4] 



THE SPECTATOR 



passing men. At length appears the task ahead — 
the great Fatherland, the Planetary Hive. 

I have taken the hint from the new race chil- 
dren, that to transcend pain we must make joy 
of it. Given the hint, one realises that the mas- 
ters of all ages have told the same story — how to 
make light of human shadow, how to make lus- 
trous our own darkness. No matter what science 
says to the contrary, the quest for the Absolute 
means the same thing; this is the marriage at 
Cana, the turning of water into wine; this is the 
passion of the ancient alchemists, to transmute 
base metals into gold; this is healing; this is 
regeneration. 

To make joy out of pain is still more: it is 
power for world's work; it is the light that one 
carries among men; it is the fire that makes man 
remembered by his fellows, that makes man sig- 
nificant in any task. It is loss of the sense of 
self; the death of the lower for the birth of the 
higher life; the subjugation of three-score-and-ten 
for immortality; an adios to the hands that cling, 
for the stride and rhythm of the Great Compan- 
ions on the long road. It is not for the saint any 
more than for the soldier, not for the sage any 
more than for the politician, not for the poet any 
more than for the parent. It is not piety, it is 
power. One learns it best from the children. 
One becomes as a little child in learning it well. 

[125] 



THE HIVE 



We are learning rapidly these days. These are 
the days of humanity's passion and pilgrimage. 
The soul of humanity is passing along the dusty 
roads of Palestine, for the healing of its own weak- 
nesses, the casting out of its own demons. One 
who is not carrying a part of the world burdens 
now, as well as his personal pack, seems forgot- 
ten of the gods. It has come to many of us that 
we dare not take more than a glimpse of our own 
allotted happiness — that we may not have more 
than a touch of the beloved's hand in these days of 
parturition everywhere. 

But personally and nationally we shall come 
to that significant crossing where nothing else 
can be taken from us, where death seems the high- 
est boon, and Master Pain has driven home his 
most pointed shaft. 

That is the moment of laughter. Driven to 
the last ditch we turn and laugh. That is the 
moment of our expansion for a new kind of hero- 
ism. One builds from that deep hour. 

The ultimate secret is not to identify oneself 
with that which changes. When these objects 
shift or break down, or some one takes them away, 
we suffer the old savage rent. The day comes when 
we disentangle from the final mesh of possession — 
cease the idolatry of things; then, and only then, 
are we rich — possessing the spirit and essence of all 
things, tallying the universe within according to 

[126] 



THE SPECTATOR 



its objective arrangements with the universe with- 
out. 

Finally, to master the world, one must learn 
actually to enjoy the mutation of material things, 
as one of an audience watches the movements on 
the stage. No longer torn here and there in the 
small fury of detached affairs, one laughs richly 
at the progress of the Play. Possessing the spirit 
of all things within, he realises that nothing he has 
can really be taken away, No longer identify- 
ing himself with material objects, he is at last 
in touch with the perfect and changeless arche- 
types. This dispassion, so difficult to reach, at 
last extends over all world-forms. One ceases to 
love bodies ; one loves souls. The son at the 
front, the daughter taken to a different house, 
the empty seat at the table, crash of finance or 
romance— all but a passing of symbols — God- 
speed and a smile. Bit by bit the valiant reaches 
that profound and almost divine indifference to 
the external, having bound himself to the real, 
the enduring, the inner cosmos. 

First passion, then dispassion, then compassion 
— conquest of pairs of opposites until night and 
day are seen as separate sides of the same globe. 
So with pain and pleasure and all fluctuations. 
Day by day, while learning this great secret, the 
aspirant is forced to die to the thing he loves most. 
Day by day the thing that he hates and fears most 
— for that he must live. At last, loves and hates 

[127] 



THE HIVE 



merge together. One is no longer focalised upon 
a point, but upon a universe. He arrives at the 
great silence in himself, the static momentum. He 
no longer moves with the world — the passing show 
goes by. He transmutes pain into joy — not lying 
to the self, but because pain of the body is joy 
of the soul — joy of union, joy of birth that comes 
from pain. 

At last to be the Spectator! To possess the 
world, to realise the divinity of others, the ineffa- 
ble equality of Souls. To have all, — the moth- 
ering winds of the hills and the holy breath of the 
sea; to move and laugh and die with all the world. 



[128] 



12 

TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 



THE younger boy with us — Tom, now 
seven, does not find it easy to express 
himself through writing. He draws 
well, but that is a talent which I would 
not recognise so quickly as the expression 
through words. I mean to send him away to an 
artist for a time. Tom's imagination is fertile 
and expansive. He dictates well — wonderful 
play of colours through his mind. He talked the 
following to an amanuensis, a year or more ago 
as he conned over a handful of coloured stones: 
"There's a wonderful mystery about stones. 
. . . One like a mountain that the fire comes up 
out of — with white on top . . . another like a 
cap of honey. . . . Another: this is like a great 
big mountain, and this is a dog full of food, and 
he's standing on a dragon, one of those devilish 
dragons ; his tail is curved under him, and a spot 
on him near his neck. He looks down and he sees 
the sky, floating. He wonders if he should leap 
down and get some. There's a great big lake un- 

[129] 



THE HIVE 



der him. He thinks he has more power than any- 
thing in the world — he's looking for more power. 
He's wondering where it is. See him thinking. 
. . . Here's a volcano at night — see the force, 
and then the rain beating dowm behind it — even 
see fairies dashing by there. Here's a man with 
his jaw knocked in. Mystery here — a forest at 
night. This is like a coloured man that's been 
in a prize-fight, and he's gritting his teeth because 
he didn't win; he's got a mug-nose too. There's 
a fried-cake. Another: Here's 'Agra Falls and 
fairies dashing, and sparkling stones at night. 
That's in Japan — that's true, look at all the lan- 
terns up there. There's some India — water dash- 
ing over a cliff, another like a smooth cliff, noth- 
ing to hurt it, just fairies to fly around it — and 
a door-knob, and there's a hole where owls 
live. . . ." 

Many interesting things appear in these dicta- 
tions provided Tom's helper effaces himself suf- 
ficiently to permit the boy to forget externals. 
The remaining pages of this chapter is a sketch of 
Tom's case written by the Little Girl * who fur- 
nishes an interesting surface of understanding for 
the complications of this lad. Incidentally her 
own development is one of the big winnings of 
Stonestudy work. The Little Girl is now four- 

* Jane Levington Comfort. 
[130] 



TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 

teen and this essay will show something of her 
awakening : 

Tom 

He is seven, restless as the sea, and just as full 
of mysteries. Many times I have felt a strong 
spirit in the body, a healer, a great lover, a dear 
and compassionate comrade. For a time Tom 
meant India to me. I could see the blue hills 
and the wide dusty roads, the cows coming home 
through the dusk, and the little Indian mothers 
bringing food and their babies to the feet of a 
withered, white old man in a big Sannysin robe. 
Always I seemed one of the mothers, and Tom the 
master. I used to sit at his feet when he was 
very small, and listen carefully to his wandering, 
yet deep and wise words. He seemed to unfold 
many things to me about nwself, and in that way 
helped me as a teacher would, though he did not 
know. 

For a while Tom's quest was in healing — his 
small hands were always laid upon our hurts, se- 
rious eyes staring upwards. It seemed to awaken 
the past in his soul. Gradually his bent turned to 
other things. When we went to the country to 
live, he saw Nature for the first time. Tom was 
very much at home with the old Mother. He 
loved the living things that most children fear; 
the bees and beetles, the blind little beings that 
live in the earth and the small, red-tongued gar- 
ter-snakes. He often spoke of a life he had lived 
with the snakes — of the big ones that used to love 

[ 131 1 



THE HIVE 



him and curl around his neck. I never could 
help shuddering a little at the thought, but Tom 
would explain, "They won't hurt you if you love 
them. Then they will love you too. Snakes 
feel just what you feel — if you're afraid of them, 
they get mad." 

Again I would think of India — the great 
cobras that sit before a pure master, opening their 
hoods to listen to his chanting. Tom knew what 
purity meant, a deepdown purity like the earth 
itself. Why should anything hurt him? . . . 
He used to hold the bees in his hands and walk 
through a cloud of double-winged beetles with 
utmost carelessness. Many times he has led me 
through a cloud of them, murmuring, "They won't 
hurt you." Once he disturbed a honeybee in the 
late afternoon, drunken and senseless on the 
fragrant flowers. It stung him. He shook it off 
his hand and said in a disgusted voice, "That 
wasn't my bee!" 

A little later Tom discovered the Unseen of 
Nature. I mean that it ceased to be the unseen 
to him. The fairies opened their mysterious 
arms, and we saw little of him for a time, so lost 
was he in their wonder. There was a small rock 
in the front yard that he used to sit on when he 
was looking for them. The busy brown gnomes 
appeared to him first — often rolling pebbles down 
the cliff, or gathering leaves in their little aprons. 
Then the tree-nymphs would come to him, so 
green and fresh and sweet — with bright eyes and 
coaxing hands. He would follow laughingly 

[ 132 ] 



TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 

what they said and did, always explaining to us 
later what they meant. And he saw the spirits 
of the water, far out over the lake, mingled with 
the sunlight. They gave him much, he said, but 
he would like to have gone out to them. He 
said that burning wood unlocked the fire fairies 
— let them out into freedom and light. He 
loved to build fires on the beach, watching care- 
fully the leaping and spreading of the flames. 
The salamanders were responsible for the spread- 
ing, he thought, and used to watch their little red 
hands at work. His eyes seemed to melt as they 
stared so far and deeply into things — way past 
the seen into that which is nothingness to most 
of us. And he would come back slowly as 
though it were hard to detach himself from the 
enchantment. Always we kept very still at such 
a time, for fear we hurry him. 

Out of the magic and mystery of that summer, 
out of the warm nights full of stars and peace, 
and the days of sunlight spent with the beckoning 
fairies, Tom's soul unfolded another big quest. 
The fairies were only the start of the Unseen 9 
though we thought at the time that he saw all 
that a human being could. At last the Master's 
voice reached his open ears. He answered im- 
mediately. 

It began with old Indian philosophy. He 
heard certain reading in the Study one day, and 
later asked for the book. It was a little book, 
written in words of one syllable by a Hindu boy, 
telling how to reach the Feet of the Master. The 

[ 133 1 



THE HIVE 



next morning I found him on his knees before it 
in the sunlight. At that time Tom was just 
learning to read. It was hard for him, but he 
wanted to be alone with the spirit of it. He 
handed me the book saying, "Please read this page 
aloud to me." 

The young Master was speaking of Discrimina- 
tion and Onepointedness. Tom's face filled with 
the wonder of one who has found the thing he has 
been wanting for a very long time — for ages per- 
haps. He said, "If you asked me to go and get 
you a book, and I went, but instead of bringing 
the book back to you, I took it to the shore and 
commenced to read, forgetting that you wanted 
it, that would be the opposite of onepointedness, 
wouldn't it?" A little later, he said: 

"The Master watches you from the hills, all 
the way up. He knows all that you do. When 
you do small things, you are taking Him away 
from yourself; you are not being the Soul. Each 
time you do something great and brave, the Mas- 
ter comes a step nearer. When you become your 
soul, the Master comes all the way down the hill 
and tells your brain which way to go — tells you 
the path, the way home. Then you have earned 
it. You have got to earn everything, everything 
that comes to you. ... I think that the Master 
comes and takes you away at night, shows you 
many things — tries to help you. But pain has to 
teach the brain, and pain is the lack of soul. It 
hurts your soul to have you suffer. It hurts the 

[ 134] 



TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 

Master too, but they both know that you are learn- 
ing to be their comrade through your pain." 

Tom paused. In his eyes there was that won- 
derful melting again, and a joy so deep and pure 
that it made my heart sing. 

"It is all meant," he added. "All is meant, 
but men do not know that the Master is watch- 
ing. For ages and ages the Master waits so pa- 
tiently for his friend to come." 

"His friend?" I asked. 

"Yes. Souls are always comrades. The Mas- 
ter is greater than you are only because he has 
been longer on the path. He started before you 
did. He has come up through all that we have. 
Just think how long my Master has been waiting 
for me, and I have not even found Him yet." 

I looked at the little body of him, at the inno- 
cence of the eyes and mouth, all untouched by the 
world — so pure and yet crying out in pain because 
he had taken so long on the quest. . . . His 
eighth year brought Tom into regular boyhood. 
The young brain, always before silently giving 
way to intuition, began to speak for itself. This 
stage is as important perhaps, but not so beau- 
tiful as when the hushedness and glowing of the 
Unseen touches a child. Here we turned from 
Tom, and the things that creep into the heart of 
almost every boy of the same age, crept into 
Tom's heart. He forgot the fairies — they ceased 
to call. He forgot the wide roads of peace and 
purity. He seemed to forget that the Master was 
still waiting so patiently on the hill for him to 

[135] 



THE HIVE 



open and receive. But we knew better than that. 

The development of the brain always robs a 
child of the inner glowing for a time, but it all 
comes back again with a great dimension added; 
the instrument is then keen and direct — a power 
in itself. We turned from Tom — a young brain 
standing alone, very conscious of itself, is any- 
thing but interesting. At the time we were in 
the turmoil of departure, each of us thinking in 
different ways about the long journey just ahead, 
and the wonder of being at last in California. 
Tom was more or less his own director those days. 

He fell into crime, looted the house of a friend, 
denied everything. He was sent to his quarters 
to stay until he found himself again. It took 
a week exactly, but he found a deep happiness in 
being alone in the little room before he left it. 
It did him as much good as the long days in the 
sunlight ever could; he came out pale and wide 
eyed, and the breath of a soul was in the room 
when he entered. 

One day out of his long week, I went to him. 
The sun had gone down behind a nest of grey 
clouds. Dusk had almost deepened into dark- 
ness, but there was no light in his room. He sat 
there, his eyes staring ahead of him, his hands 
folded tightly in his lap. I walked in quietly 
and sat down beside him. I was not even no- 
ticed ; he was lost in his thought. At last I asked, 

"Tom, what did you find so interesting in that 
cheap business?" 

"I haven't found out yet," he said grimly. 
[136] 



TOM AND THE LITTLE GIRL 

"Have you been thinking about it?'' 

"Sure have, Been thinking all day." 

"Has nothing come?" 

"No, but it's coming soon. It can't take long 
if I stay here like this, wishing and pulling every 
minute." 

"Of course it can't." 

He continued to stare into the darkness ahead. 

"What does it feel like, Tom?" I asked. 

"Your soul leaves you. . . . Your soul won't 
stay if you are going back." 

"Going back?" 

"Yes. I mean if you have been big and lis- 
tened to its voice, and then stop. If you are less 
than yourself after you've been more, your soul 
won't stay." 

"What do you do when your soul leaves you?" 

"You walk the Black Path." 

He looked a child seraph. 

"That path is not interesting, is it?" 

"No. You have got to know what it is, got 
to walk up it a little ways, so that you are not 
afraid of it any more. When you know a thing, 
you are not afraid of it any longer. Before you 
know, it looks all dark to you. Nothing can hurt 
you when you are not afraid. . . . It's just the 
same as with the animals. All the black things 
that come into you are animals. If they find 
nothing but love and whiteness inside, they will 
go away and not even look at you again; but if 
fear and darkness are there, they get mad and 
bite." 

[137] 



THE HIVE 



Leaning forward with a laugh, he added, 
"You can't cut across from the black path to the 
white. You've got to go all the way back and 
start over." 



[138] 



13 
THE ABBOT 



THE Abbot is now seventeen. He is do- 
ing well at Columbia. Classes and 
routine there are mere externals. The 
Abbot is living a life far more real 
than appears—a life that few men in Amer- 
ica have learned how to live. He has actually 
arrived at the conviction of the unfathomable 
riches that lie within. Many occultists and a few 
great artists have a working knowledge of this 
kind. We hoped the Abbot could remain at 
Stonestudy, but his parents wanted some letters 
after his family name as well as before. Our 
young man was enjoined to make the best of it. 
As a matter of fact, he is putting on a lot of brain 
things that work admirably with the inner activ- 
ity which we made much of in our work together. 
In another book,* I told of the Abbot's awak- 
ening — how we called him from mysterious re- 
gions of silence and mystification, to a more or 

* Child and Country. 

[139] 



THE HIVE 



less adequate expression of material facts. Here 
was a boy almost overshadowed by his own soul 
at times, inclined to be half out of the body and 
not altogether present in the mind, when moving 
among the sordid affairs of the world — a lad who 
knew the arrangement of planets and the flow of 
meteoric matter better than the geography of our 
own continent; who swung very readily back into 
memories of other lives, mainly monastic, rather 
than into the episodes of his own kid-days. 

I forget just how it was that we first sensed the 
giant in this boy. In any case, we struck one. 
The ordinary training that I would give an Amer- 
ican youth to breathe the soul of him, was not at 
all necessary with the Abbot. Rather, pressure 
was exerted from the first to make him come down 
into our world, to make him be one of us, to make 
him see streets and alleys, doorsteps and servant- 
stairs. They have succeeded better at Columbia 
in this regard than we were able to do, but the 
wonder and satisfaction of it all is, that the 
aroused mystic, the aroused artist, has not receded 
— but dominates his days and work. I understand 
that he is considered a sensation in a literary way. 

He is not different from his fellows. It is part 
of our ethics to belong where we happen to be; to 
do the things that others do, better, if possible, 
than the customary performance; to begin after 
that to be our inimitable selves. It is our ideal 
to move about the world, not to attract attention, 

[ Ho] 



THE ABBOT 



to be quiet and calm and efficacious, to be help- 
ful and humorous and wise, to furnish the swift, 
unerring word or hand or lift in the midst of af- 
fairs; to deny ourselves to no one; to hold our- 
selves superior to no one; to strive laughingly 
toward the big workmanship, to become Players 
after the essential apprenticeship, to win the 
Laugh at last, and that perfect consummation 
which only comes with utter and instant detach- 
ment when the task is accomplished 

The Abbot was sprawled in a Study shadow 
one summer afternoon, when I suddenly saw 
him in relation to big sea-tales. Usually we 
tale-tellers carry our packs. I saw the Abbot 
with a sea-chest that day. His was not the way 
of the Arabian fires and the Assyrian camel paths 
— the word-spinner's usual evolutionary line. He 
came overseas with his narratives. ... I saw him 
in the next few years making a circle around all 
the capes, touching all the ports of Asiatic and 
insular water fronts — a bit of Conrad, a bit of 
Melville, a bit of Stevenson ... a most sump- 
tuous sea-chest full of shells, corals, coins and 
trinkets from all the Islands ; feather of a woman's 
fan perhaps, here and there, silks hazy from sea 
water, crooked knives from Malay Isles, whale- 
bone and shark's teeth, pearl of the mollusk, a 
bit of ambergris—just a top tray of the Chest! 
Deep mystic parchments farther within, a corner 

[Hi] 



THE HIVE 



for the sacred writings of all the world, a small 
type mill, a great wad of white paper, the rest 
mainly traces of a long glide across the ocean 
floors. 

I have learned to go very slow in building a 
matrix of my own thought about any young man's 
mind, yet I told the Abbot that day what I saw 
for him — how he was bound to do the big sea- 
tales, how we were sick of steam, sick already of 
the big hydroplanes, sick of all that hurries, all 
that explodes, all that has the taint of gas; that 
the world presently would be so sick of noise and 
explosions and show and speed, that professional 
soothers would be in great demand, like the Jap- 
anese masseurs who wait upon the sleepless; that 
the sick world would want to read of long, loose, 
lazy days under canvas, of the few ports left 
where they haven't set up recruiting offices; — 
that the world would be in desperate need of sun- 
light and surf and wide swinging seas — that he 
must be one of those to usher in the old romance 
of the sailing craft again. 

I told about his sea-chest better than I have 
told it here, but the Abbot's eyes didn't bulge. 
Presently, however, he began to grow that way. 
. . . His Saturdays and Sabbaths now are spent, 
not in Morningside Heights, but down among the 
shipping and across the harbour, where the big 
world tramps hang out. You will see these 
things in his letters. I have several of his yarns 

[ 142] 



THE ABBOT 



here, but I am not going to run any of them in 
this book. They are good yarns, but too intrin- 
sically big yet for the handling of a boy of seven- 
teen. He has too much calibre for his brain so 
far to carry ten thousand words to superb con- 
summation. I want to spring a big tale pres- 
ently. I have a lapful of his random letters 
from days spent down on the water front, and 
nights under the study lamp : 

Dear Old Wasp : 

Morning mists over the lake, the Pelee com- 
ing up out of them. Just had a night with John 
and a corking good run of work. We've been 
watching the sun go down from Lynster's * back 
lately, and breathing the planetary heave under 
the stars, with the milky way dipping to the lake 
before us. This inland place is heavy to take. 
The weight of agriculture is like a blanket over 
all. It takes three or four pages to bore up 
through the cuticle. Me for a get-away to the 
world soon — to feed up on the hum of feet and 
voices and cars. . . . Blackbirds are beginning to 
blacken the mornings and nights again; touch of 
Fall and Pine-smoke this morning. Real itch- 
ings in the ankles— to you! A wonderful syn- 
thesis for us all when we meet up again. . . . I'd 
like to roam the world with John. He is a grand 

* The saddle horse. 

[143] 



THE HIVE 



pal. Could joke over an oven made out of a 
tomato-can, as well as eat from a banquet 
table. . . . 

A day or two later: 

. . . Black forces strong around Stonestudy 
last night. . . . About eight-thirty I rode over on 
Lynt, to sleep with John. Decided to have 
a debauch with tea. While I worked on, he gath- 
ered the cups and tea and electric tea-kettle to- 
gether and got things going. He called for me 
to come and make the tea. He was seated in the 
big chair with a tableleaf in front of him, and 
on that was the tea-kettle, boiling. . . . One leg 
slipped, and the whole boiling collection went in 
his lap. ... A prince, the way he stood it. The 
bunch was just coming back from town. Penel' 
rushed over, and the next was a turmoil right, 
cries, olive oil, lint, rags, confusion of voices and 
footsteps — too many people and the little guy sort 
o' lost his control — but it all came back again. 
Almost any minute I am looking for the laugh 
from him. All night I was with him. Penelope, 
the finished heroine as always. One could see the 
shades of pain pass over John's face time and 
again. His nerves jump — but his mouth and 
eyes are certainly getting a grand hue of steel. 
. . . k Yours right along. 

[ 144] 



THE ABBOT 



Another : 

Hazy summer about. Blue over the lake with 
shadows deepening in the distance. Crops dry- 
ing beneath the sun. Leave it at its height — am 
headed back for Columbia — where I'll let time 
shape the winds for farther "going." 

School is not harmful to one who is himself. 
I'll take philosophy, and then be over to tell you 
who stole your washboard. ... It is no strug- 
gle, no test, for one to be lit among his own as 
we are. One's depth of listening is best 
tested in crowds. We've got to separate — go out 
and change the continents into tablelands of 
democracy. 

War seems settling on the world for years 
longer, but there is a bigger order coming out of 
the incredible chaos. Each must see God and 
worship through his work to shape the master 
beauty. Every one's art breaks new roads which 
lead to one place. 

Stories are coming freer every day — I've gotten 
across. Don't know whether it's the best thing 
for me. But I've done it, and that's what I 
wanted to know. It is all preparation. Results 
are beginnings. I look back now on the summer 
of '14. It was heaven. It was peace. To look 
at the cottage lights and hear the voices of row- 
ers through the dusk was a breath from God. It 
was peace, it was relaxation, a deep resting of tis- 
sue for turmoil. Depth and mastery to you. 

[145] 



THE HIVE 



This to John: 

The thought of your scarred legs has been with 
me on the borderland of sleep for many nights, 
also our hours together on the pine needles. To- 
night, with the sun falling sadly over the iron 
mills, I walked along the Heights and cast an eye 
down into brilliant Harlem. The voices of the 
bargemen, the wheeze of tugs, the low growl of 
outpassing vessels, an occasional curse from a 
freighted barge, came up with the hum of the 
city. There seemed to be some goddess entwined 
with sea-weed standing over the ocean of struc- 
tures. She held a finger to her lips for silence, 
and pointed to the Lord knows where — well, 
where I felt a tumult to go, to satisfy some hot 
quest. ... I was lost to the multitude of faces 
that sent up a passionate and incomprehensible 
hum . . . savour of youth singing in the veins. 

Presently a drizzle drove me back to the room. 
. • . I reached up and flicked out the lights. . . . 
In an apartment across the street lives an old man 
who always comes to his window at dark and 
gazes up and down the streets. His head is grey 
— his eyes are deep and old. The light from his 
shaded reading lamp falls in a pool of dim yellow 
about his carpet. Sometimes he turns out the 
lamp, and leaves the fire-place alone. Sometimes 
his head falls forward on his chest, and he dreams 
— I suppose, of boundless seas, for he was once a 
sea-captain. 

[146] 



THE ABBOT 



His wandering days are over — no more quest. 
The houses rise to his eyes like one long, bleak, 
uncrested wave from the Arctic Sea. . . . He 
means old days, but we — we must never grow 
old; we must live and ever be full of creation as 
the cloud is full of lightning. We must, old pal, 
ride the deserts, drift over seas ; we must spill our 
work as we go, as night spills its stars from a cas- 
ket. Fill me up with the Pacific in your letters 
— the big sunlight — the colour of the mountains 
where they dip and rise to clouds. I have a dry 
palate for it all. Fill me — eye and ear and soul. 

Yours deep in those scars— — 

Dear Old Man : 

The Hudson is very still this morning; a few 
battleships have swung out with the tide; gulls 
seem to be forever passing up and down the river 
in white eddies; smoke from the factories rises 
straight and white. The morning sun strikes like 
a sledge upon the Palisades. How grand that old 
river is, and how untiring in its endless ebb and 
flood — almost like a solar system in the serene way 
it deals with human traffic. 

A great new sense of words has come over me 
lately. At the very birth of language lies a chest 
of rich obsolete words — quite like a Spanish treas- 
ure chest, with its doubloons, bezoar stones and 
"pots of Arica bronze." The artists go treasure 
hunting in language, and a few do startle the 

[H7] 



THE HIVE 

world with their wealth. The live-long day 
seems to me now like a shuttle driving back and 
forth, weaving from soul to matter, a golden 
fabric. 

This word-chest means much to me because it 
deals with the sea. Lift up the lid, and tucked 
away in those little drawers lies the seaman's 
religion in bits of turquoise, in coils of fish line 
and hooks, in pink sea-shells, perhaps in an old 
violin, or in a few stray books of Carlyle, Goethe, 
Dante and Melville's Moby Dick. The point is 
we all bungle along through our world-term 
somehow; we have our work and religion anc 
pleasures and tales in a camphor-wood chest wit! 
a brass band around it. Sometimes we bring out 
the violin and make God-awful discords, calling 
it music of the sea; we brighten people's eyes with 
our bits of turquoise; terrorise them with the 
philosophy that Carlyle and Goethe and Moby 
Dick have given us ; we make them feel that end- 
less wroom, zvroom, wroom of the ocean that is 
washing in our souls. 

Yes, we must first learn the futility of life be- 
fore we can live. The war teaches this lesson 
well, but won't it be great when everybody is sing- 
ing over his golden shuttle and laughing? Won't 
it be great when the chastened New Race 
springs up, like green shoots at the passing of 
winter? Won't it be great when the world has 
grown serene and wise enough to sit down beside 

[148] 



THE ABBOT 



a blazing bark fire, with the shadows of pine trees 
about, or near the dim breakers, and consider it 
profitable to talk about the stars? 

. , . There are times when one feels he must 
be alone— -when he wants to be connected with 
nothing — when he wants to go to a distant and 
high altitude, and there boil his pot of alchemy 
— there, where the air is dust free, and the in- 
cense of one's devotion goes straight up. He 
must listen and listen, until he believes that he 
hears the stars humming in their courses ; then the 
sun drawing like a magnet, then a crescendo of 
song up to a deafening roar, — -that all things, all 
stars, are headed towards one point of balance 
among that whole mass of sapphires we see above. 

Man, but the joy of telling tales, of recording 
the warmth of human hearts, of loving men and 
their ways— to fill out a morning with that golden 
shuttle! One has but to sit and the sun on the 
walls and the shadows in the corners, or if at 
night, the flame on the stones of the hearth turn 
to words ! . . . The old sea is full of that. The 
heart within her breast sounds the footfalls of 
quest; the ecstasy of life tears in her storm and 
in still hours she sits in her glitter. . . . 

Some day we shall be together on the blessed 
Pacific coast. We shall have bookshelves and 
packages of dates, bottles of cream and combs of 
honey. We shall work with that rugged lunge of 
mountains in our products; and that endless and 

[ H9] 



THE HIVE 



insistent wroom, wroom, wroom of the ocean in 
all. Listen, here is a day as we shall have it: 

The sun lifting up the depth of Canyon shall 
awake us. After we have cooked and eaten of 
crisp toast and honey and coffee, we shall go to 
our desks and bring out a most rigid problem in 
mathematics,* and dwell perhaps for an hour in 
drawing all forces of thinking into play — awak- 
ing the mind — shaking off that inertia of body. 
After that we shall penetrate the thing which we 
wish to work upon that particular morning. We 
shall see its functions and logical action, then be- 
gin the shuttle and weave back and forth with 
that pliancy that sees the deepest of metaphysics 
in an old man lighting a pipe or loitering over a 
pork-pie. To top the morning, we'll have a meal 
of milk and dates. The afternoon shall mean 
an isolation with the books — perhaps on the sand 
with the sun tanning our backs. Both healthfully 
and mentally an efflux of soul. At about five in 
the afternoon comes the humming calm — the poise 
of mind and soul and body. Another meal of 
the simple foods and once more, production, as the 
sun goes into the sea — giving one's soul the might 
and expanse that the planets use in weaving their 
ways. Perhaps, at ten or eleven we shall reach 
up, switch out the electric bulb and open the door. 
That shall be a day mastered. Side by side, we'll 
walk over to the cliff at whose base mumbles the 

* Help ! 

[150] 



THE ABBOT 



mighty Pacific. We shall pass no words — the 
earth' 11 be good to feel and smell. We'll hon- 
our the still night of stars. 

That day is a privilege to earn — our bodies 
must suffer and become scarred and jostled by the 
currents of people, and cursed upon by foul 
mouths. All pleasant presently. We must 
know the heart of a bartender as we would want 
to know the heart of the Christ. Do you know 
that Masefield was a bartender? The secret of 
the real artist is sanity. One must grow hair the 
medium length — keep a well muscled and full 
lunged body — and if chronic fishermen should 
happen in on us for a meal we must be able to 
argue that a hickory pole is better for a pound- 
net than pine; or if a devout pastor — that we 
would much rather praise God's work outside on 
the beach. ... 

To Jane : 

Your letter this morning after a long, wonder- 
ful run of work. This is really the highest day 
I've had— real rugged work — bronze moving pic- 
tures before me— faces — open shirts on sunburnt 
breasts — and, of course, the eternal sea. Your 
letter came like a sudden bag of sunlight emptied 
into a mist. The water became blue and the 
promontories sharp like ink lines. 

And about Steve. I understand all. The 
draft explains his not writing. And this war — 

[151] 



THE HIVE 



it's like a maelstrom rising higher and higher. 
Next summer for certain, possibly this Christmas, 
it means I go. But rather than go as a private 
I'm going to enlist voluntarily in the aviation 
corps. Flying only would have as much thrill as 
doing the climax of a story. That's like the sea. 
And I'm not panicky or worried about it. I feel 
in some unconscious way that the balance of the 
cosmos demands it. God, nobody should drag 
now! It's just like a marshfire that grows and 
grows to let the new green shoots come under in 
spring. It's like a big song. I would not go to 
fight Germany, or France or England or America. 
I'd go because it's a cleanser. One must play 
with the song of many feet and express with the 
original song. One must flash pictures to the 
many eyes of their own being. Oh — it's a song, 
the whole thing ! And I'm looking forward to it. 

Only the ones such as John and Tom shall es- 
cape. Don't you see the joy, the peace, the 
grandeur in owning a scar, in being bled white? 
The first year of the war, England was black with 
mourning. Now, she is white. . . . The work is 
on me with talons. 

I am looking only at the impossible heights — 
of a portrayal of life — the rugged life in endless 
volumes. I have made an oath silently with my- 
self that in three years I shall do a book. . . . 
The work comes now just as if I were to sit down 
before a fire-place with shadows and light around 

[152] 



THE ABBOT 



stones, and were to grow interested, with stars low 
on the horizon like live sparks. 

And friends? A foolish question! I mean 
that I must be alone in the formative thrall of 
work. I did want your letter. But forget pity. 
That is a thing that stifles soul. I do not ask, 
by all the stars, I do not ask for anything. The 
highest of all things to you all. 

And Steve? He has too much of the Song to 
be trodden or be lost or be ground in mud. You 
are all friends — -but I must be alone now. The 
work is rising. . . a 

To John : 

There ain't no sun beatin' in my doorway, and 
there ain't none of your sacred seas and canyons 
around; but there is a socialist's riot in the street 
below — kerosene torches a-going — one shaggy 
haired enthusiast is standing on a soap box and is 
wagging his jaw in an athletic way. . . . How's 
the fire burning under your type-mill? What's 
the brand of smoke it gives up — poetry, action, 
lumps of granite or ladles of ocean? I'm all lit 
up in this place here — because things are moving 
— real issues are gathering — and the pulse of liv- 
ing is so close that I can almost feel it occasionally. 
Last Saturday, went to a place called Rockaway 
—and oh man — rocks — rugged grey and eroded 
— '-surf bitten — gnarled, twisted — and they tossed 
the sea's white jaws about like bits of cotton. 

[153] 



THE HIVE 



Real sea coast it was — with a little smack in the 
purple way, her sails bellied, her mouth lapping 
the brine — an old fisherman browsing around the 
shores for clams while his wife hauled up the nets, 
basketed the cod and upturned their boat. 

Put an extra stick under the machine and line 
a few of your aphorisms. 



[1541 



THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 



THE young workmen here do essays 
well, earlier than short stories. Longer 
training is required for fiction. The 
reason is obvious. Fiction work takes 
brain. The Stonestudy idea is to set free the 
greater Artist within. Essays and ethical works 
are the natural fruits of the inner life of the ages ; 
story-production requires facility and development 
of the everyday working consciousness. Straight 
brain is needed to arrange settings, keen develop- 
ment of actual tissue to note and arrange and re- 
member. Also a big working surface of self-crit- 
icism must be prepared. 

There is a quality of fiction that seems to set 
free a larger consciousness and to bring with it 
settings and atmospheres of another age. This 
sort of phenomenon encourages the idea of the 
continuity of consciousness — before and after the 
three-score-and-ten. It may be that the greater the 
Artist, the more of these veins of syntheticated ex- 
perience are open to his every-day working mind. 

[155] 



THE HIVE 



That may really be what sumptuous artistic equip- 
ment is — the capacity to open up the old loves and 
scenes and adventures of the long road. Intui- 
tion is explained as the use of the result of massed 
experiences, intellect the coping with one at a 
time; intuition, a light that flashes from peak to 
peak, intellect as a running fire up and down from 
height and vale. 

Certainly intellect alone will never make a great 
drama of life and love, yet action and romance of 
the present hour draw hard upon one's present life 
training and the faculties and tastes of his im- 
mediate culture — actual brain possession and the 
ordering thereof. A child can portray superbly 
well some ancient imprint upon the Soul, even 
the passages of his own initiations through earth, 
water, air and fire, his brain not conscious of the 
real nature of what is coming forth ; yet, the same 
child cannot put the cohering line through a se- 
ries of episodes occurring under his own notice. 
Something of this mental grasp is necessary to 
make the artful effect required in a short tale. 
The child's mind, in the first place, is trained to 
listen and interpret the experiences of the larger 
consciousness; in the second set of conditions, he 
is forced to rely upon actual brain tissue which 
requires the training and culture of the years. 

Art is composition. The farther you go, the 
finer the tools. It is difficult to train the fingers 
to intricate tricks of weaving, or the brain to sort 

[156] 



THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 

and place the facts and colours and surprises of a 
present-day narrative or tale, but the soul may 
be called upon to express through the narrow 
temples of an awakened child its cosmic under- 
standing, its ordered firmament. 

Decades of observation and reporting; firm and 
verified actuality of knowledge and opinion; to 
these, added experience and the excellence of or- 
der — such is the training of the intellectual artist 
who times his production to his own generations. 
He pays the price in pain and subjection to the 
things that are ; he knows well the meaning of la- 
bour; often, though he may still laugh as an ar- 
tist, he has forgotten how to laugh as a man. 

My desk here is covered with papers and poems 
of a beauty this intellectual artist cannot reach, 
of a freedom he can never know, until he lifts the 
torch of his consciousness out of and above the 
brain, making that serve quite as his knees bend 
and serve. Thinking of these things to-day, the 
door of the Study opened and the Little Girl gave 
me her work. She writes things of the larger con- 
sciousness without effort, but finds it hard and 
wearing to narrate the immediate matters of life. 
To her, the fine short story of the present hour is 
the great accomplishment, the ideal she is working 
toward. 

With another she goes often to the cities — 
rambling among the rooming-houses, cheaper res- 
taurants and mills. She means to work in the 

[157] 



THE HIVE 



mills soon — to forget herself and forget us for a 
time, to be with the harder-lucked girls whom she 
loves with thrilling passion. She has brought 
home from these little adventures wonderful 
stories of the patience and the laughter and the 
heroism crowding like hidden sacred presences 
about the duller lives. She brings a humour to 
the telling of the divine secrets of the poor — the 
clutching pang for food, the soldier going, his 
baby coming, the tortured spine, the stunted, the 
darkened, the wasted — an irresistible divinity 
about it all — pain impermanent, joy enduring. 
Back of the lacking eyes and leaking lives, she 
sees wonders that Zola never saw, that none can 
see with mere intelligence, that none can dream, 
who sees only the here and now, who has not 
learned to laugh at the so-called injustices of men, 
who cannot see the greater order to come because 
the present chaos is so devastating. 

One may report minutiae of torments, mass the 
items of degradation and bring forth a great doc- 
ument of the underworld — but these are mere 
foundations. The Builders bring the dream, 
they live the hope, they open the long-road con- 
sciousness, they substantiate their visions of bet- 
ter days, bring order and coherence to all the 
splendid toil of the intellectualist ; they raise their 
edifice upon all that is done. . . . Here is the 
Little Girl's work of to-day's writing: 

[158] 



the artist unleashed 

Meditation 

In the night the Master came down to a woman 
who lay sad and sleepless in a dark house. He 
came so near that she felt his holy radiance. Her 
soul breathed; her body ceased to tremble; she 
felt within his sacred circle. The Master 
smiled and said: 

"Why do you not sleep?" 

The woman answered, "I am carried away by 
thoughts that will not hush. Night after night 
I lie here so bitterly close to old dreams. I real- 
ise that they are not worthy, but my brain is full 
of them." 

The Master smiled again. "There is a way to 
compel the silence of the brain." 

"I have not found it," said the woman. 

"Learn to be the soul," the Master said. He 
suggested a way to begin — then was gone. 

The rest of that night the woman thought of 
his words. Deeper and deeper his words sank 
into her heart. When morning came, a happi- 
ness brooded within; she dressed quickly and 
went out. . . . Back of her little house rose the 
golden brown hills. She climbed, and at the top 
of the nearest, sat down. The peace and purity 
and fragrance of the sun-steeped hills filled her 
soul. For a long time she thought in silence, then 
slipping off her loose white sandals, said: "I be- 
gin with the grass. Yes, I begin with my feet. 
. . . How wonderful you are — so ready to obey, 
to give your service at any time! What would 

[159] 



THE HIVE 



happen if you carried me other than my will? 
Supposing some day I should be walking fast to 
the house of my beloved, when you suddenly took 
me the other way !" 

She laughed, and added: "You stay with me 
all my life, and little by little are carrying me up 
the shining path to the Father's house. And yet 
— how strange! I am not you. . . . And my 
knees, how wonderful and willing — all limber 
and full of life — helping me in all ways to do all 
things — bending gently when I bow in holy com- 
munion, expressing joy through free, easy move- 
ments, mute, yet strong before pain! There is 
nothing more wonderful in the world than you. 
Yet — I am not my knees. 

"And you, old heart," she added. "You have 
endured the keenest pain; you have loved and 
given yourself, have hated and become black only 
through pain to whiten again — old heart of many 
rendings — until all life was tragedy, and you al- 
most ceased to beat. Little heart, sanctuary of 
the soul — room for his rest. . . . Yet I am not 
the heart! 

"And the white throat in which the lotus un- 
folds its mystic petals of light — I am not the 
throat! . . . And the mind, stream for the 
soul's fulfilment — listener, runner, interpreter of 
light — mate of the soul in all things, ever ready, 
sparkling with the inner fire, — I am not the mind. 
You can hurt me no longer. I am free!" 

The woman sitting alone upon the hilltop, 
paused again. "What am I?" she almost cried. 

[160] 



i 



THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 

It was as though the hills, the air and the ris- 
ing sun joined her in the answer — "I Am, . . . 
Longer than the living flame leaps within, i" 
Am. Longer than sun and planets radiate light, 
I Am. Longer than worlds give birth to form, I 
Am. I am one with the rocks and the sea, one 
with the warmth and light, one with the earth, one 
with Humanity. 

"I am Humanity. I Am." 



It is only when the Little Girl brings in a bit 
of fiction that we remember her years. The 
brain that even now can polish a detached inci- 
dent, or clip into firing-form a bit of humour of 
the street, cannot as yet order the narrative to a 
culminating effect. She is in her brain, which is 
only fourteen, struggling with the matters of time 
and space, wherein only lie pain and bewilder- 
ment. 

Art is long. The training of the hand and in- 
tellect requires the years — but not the labour, not 
the agony, not the mad strain supposed to pre- 
pare one for an artistic career by those who be- 
lieve mental equipment to be all. . . . The key 
to this whole discussion is the fact that the brain 
can be developed more in a year through inner 
awakening than in a decade by the usual methods 
of external impacts alone. . . . The ideal educa- 
tion is the balancing of the without with the 
within — the tallying of the world without with 

[161] 



THE HIVE 



the world within — the same old story of the king- 
dom without clearing its correspondences with the 
kingdom within. 

The Little Girl's ideal is to do great stories. 
They challenge her by their very difficulty. 
When I see where she stands now, and think of 
the far ways we elders went to learn the game; 
when I see what the twenty-year-olds are doing 
now, how they command their mysticism — a 
harder task for me than the accomplishment of 
physical results; when I see the inner bloom and 
co-ordination and the inimitable surfaces which 
come to all the arts by the development of the 
soul life first, the listening for the Master within 
— I want to get my hands on them all, upon all 
the young builders of the New Race. I want at 
once to awaken within them the Spectator — the 
One who cannot be swung back and forth in the 
pairs of opposites, who cannot give himself to the 
partisans, who has glimpsed the Plan and offers 
it full adoration, who says accordingly that the 
best possible thing that can happen is the thing 
that happens next. These are the young Players 
who will reveal life by living it — portray life as 
naturally as breathing, whose equipment is not 
possessions, not even brain possessions, but spir- 
itual en rapport with all, oneness with all life. 

I remember struggling for effects. These young 
people breathe effects. I remember style as a 
studied attainment. These young people ac- 

[162] 



THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 

knowledge but one style — that is being one's self. 
... I want to set many of them free from within 
outward. In their gladness at the finding of them- 
selves, they will go forth to include the world; 
they will bring to it the compassion which en- 
folds all, reveals all. ... Love the world well 
and you will understand it. Love the world well, 
and you will write well to it. Give it yourself, 
and the world is yours. 



[163] 



i5 
WORK IN SHORT STORIES 



T 



HE Little Girl sketched this im- 
pression of an Indian Summer 
Dusk: 



. . . Just now the great blue dusk, after an 
Indian summer day. It deepens and seems to 
laugh, then all is night. Huge black clouds roll 
up, promising a storm. Against them, tall, self- 
ish, unafraid, stand the poplar trees. The great 
Mother of the dusk is singing, the God in Nature 
is singing, and Nature's belongings, all of them, 
sing in this magical moment. One feels it all in 
one's self, feels the glory, the romance, the very 
core-life of the Universe. The matings too, tak- 
ing place in the grass and air; the matings of the 
two streams, the two grains of sand ; the matings 
of butterflies, birds and bees. It all flows 
through one's body like music and honey and sun- 
shine. . . . 

Nothing but space is around me. I feel all 
hollow inside. Power and beauty and all things 
else flow through . . . and out, like a sieve. My 

[164] 



i 



WORK IN SHORT STORIES 

body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. 
It does not stumble, nor make any clumsy, un- 
necessary movement. Finding it alone and for- 
gotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. 
Slowly, softly, gently, Rhythm carries it along, 
the same that carries the deer so swiftly in the 
forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge 
and over valleys, and that which waves the trees' 
long arms so gracefully. . . . The night moves 
on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am 
back again — an untellable freshness has sweet- 
ened hair and clothing. I am all glowing inside. 

This was done two years ago. There was a 
kind of dream story which she recently finished, 
gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way 
that ruined it for the general reader. It was all 
new to her that there could possibly be two ways 
to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or six 
story-writers were present for the reading, and 
out of the fruits of that evening, we surely saw 
the lesser beauty give way before a greater. We 
forecasted the readers of the future, who would 
prefer the more spiritual, more challenging story 
texture and denouement. 

There has always been The Few — glad to dis- 
cover the real, answering to interior order and 
clarity, "straight grain, 5 ' — but the fact for en- 
thusiasm now is that the world is being peopled 
with the awakened. These young moderns are 
recognising each other from day to day, pulling 

[165] 



THE HIVE 



together for better social order, utilising the wis- 
dom of the East, and the drive of the West — la- 
bouring in new paths, daring new leaps, working 
out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn 
and, what is straighter to the point, demanding 
modern books, written out of an integrity to 
match their own. . . . 

Short story writing in America is less a trade 
and more of an art since Edward J. O'Brien, the 
poet, took his chair in the flow of the output and 
began to say which was which. There are a num- 
ber 'of people in America who know a good short 
story when they see one; this is true among those 
who buy short stories, but editors cannot always 
buy what they want. A deal of mechanism in a 
magazine has to be oiled and energised by differ- 
ent kinds of minds from those who paint the pic- 
tures and write the tales. O'Brien knew both 
ends — also he knew that big, unobtrusive part of 
the market that looks long and pointedly for the 
real tale. 

He is a queer boy — from the bleak fishing 
grounds north of Boston. He is in no hurry. 
You couldn't tell if he really wants anything. 
He doesn't seem to want much — for O'Brien. 
. . . After he had his main line and most of the 
ramifications of his idea laid, he told the editors 
to send on the stories. Most of them did. 
O'Brien did a lot of work in a few weeks, did it 
startlingly well. He started something. . . . 

[166] 



WORK IN SHORT STORIES 

Now, if a writer sits down, suddenly struck with 
a fine idea for a tale, and this fine idea precludes 
the possibility of selling it for a high price — the 
writer dares go ahead and finish the task, because 
he knows O'Brien will get to the thing in due 
time, and that if it is really what it seems and 
the performance of the idea adequate, then the 
work will not be utterly lost. 

As a matter of fact, this is a bit of self-placa- 
tion, since no work is lost ; no one gets the value of 
a big thing to anything like the degree of the man 
who does it; no big thing is lost from the world, 
not even if dropped in a sewer, if it is really im- 
portant for the world to have it. We are all a 
bit too heavily handicapped with our own idea of 
what the world should have from our own shops 
— at the same time, when we are young, we pant 
for the quicker return, the answering hail within 
reason— at least, within time and space. Now 
O'Brien has come, strangely arrived, his proper 
phylacteries in place, the touch of tinted haze 
about his head, the right man. 

Back of all, however, is the workman's own 
spine. That's the best thing to lean on; and 
when the going is heavy, to learn to do without. 
We often remind each other in Chapel of the 
modern artist Cezanne, who moved about his 
painting for many years, painting the thing, satis- 
fying his soul, and leaving his canvasses around in 
the fields for the peasants to laugh at or mull over. 

[167] 



THE HIVE 



. . . They have long since been brought in out of 
the rain — those canvasses. I forget the incredible 
thousands his littlest sketch brings now. . . . 
But Cezanne got the films out of himself — tallied 
them off — the landscapes within and without, 
when it did him most good. It never fails. 
What was good for the artist is good for the rest 
of us afterward. 

Meanwhile much is still to do in the story 
world. The big smash of the moving pictures 
hasn't cleared from our game yet. It will be the 
cause of greater tales before the end is seen, for 
you can't portray the realities of romance upon a 
flat screen. For a time the many thought it was 
no longer necessary to learn to read, because there 
was such a torrent of pictures everywhere, but it 
was only through the pictures that the few has 
finally managed to realize how marvelously pic- 
torial mere words are, and how few words are 
required when they are imaginatively driven. One 
day in Stonestudy we discussed these story and 
screen affairs, looking ahead somewhat to better 
times than these. One of our young men, whose 
story is told in a later chapter, put down the 
things we talked about. This is Shuk's writing: 

A fresh and different vitality is manifest to- 
day in American literature. At various points 
around us, dealing with words, colours and the 
subtler tools, are active young workmen who for 

[168] 



WORK IN SHORT STORIES 

the first time, in the fullest sense, may be termed 
"North American." The first characteristic of 
this new element, these young flexible and vig- 
orous minds, is that they are workmen — -not la- 
bourers, not professionals, not primarily artists in 
anything unless it be life — but workers first, and 
after that novelists, poets, musicians, painters or 
politicians. They are not competitors. They 
have not forgotten the warm side of justice, but 
they know well the stern face of compassion — 
they know that it takes Christ and anti-Christ to 
make a world. They are neither modest nor ego- 
tistical, being for the most part busy and intensely 
alive. This implies their joy. 

The great love story has not been written. 
The few great love stories of the world have to be 
pieced out by the imagination. We find that we 
have been told that certain are great love stories, 
but they do not stand examination. The classic 
form will not do for the New Age. There is to be 
a new language — -for literary handling. It may 
be called American, to distinguish it from English 
in the accepted form. It is to be brisk, Lrief, brave 
and ebullient — to meet the modification all must 
reckon with— the screen-trained mind. 

American-mindedness of itself, cannot yet ac- 
cept a great love-story. It would be called "sen- 
timental" if not lascivious. The average Amer- 
ican is an impossible lover, making it incident to 
business. The real and the sham are equally 
above him. He would not know when to be ex- 
alted or when to be ashamed. He thinks his own 

[169] 



THE HIVE 






passion is evil, and thus makes it so. The great 
love-story can only be written with creative dy- 
namics, and can only be accepted as yet by the few 
of corresponding receptivity. There is nothing 
soft about true romance. Some passionate singer 
of the New Age will likely appear right soon, his 
story to have the full redolence and lustre of the 
heart, his emotions thoroughbred, his literary qual- 
ity at the same time crystalline with reality. 

The big adventure-story has not been done so 
far. The day of guns, horses and redskins is 
over. Photoplays have developed these fiction 
resources to the limit, proving to those writers 
born to be modern that their full tales can never 
be shown on a flat surface. There will be under- 
currents, overtones, invisible movements, tensions 
upon the reader, not only from between the lines, 
but between words. The story-teller of the New 
Age may handle his theme in words of one sylla- 
ble, but his tale will have an intensity scarcely to 
be explained — only responded to by minds which 
cannot be satisfied by two-plane production — 
minds which demand more of life than the camera 
sees. 

The real war-story of to-day, even for to-mor- 
row, ought to arrive soon. This is an age for an 
epic. Some keen and comprehensive mind will 
arise — a literary genius who will include the pa- 
triot, the anarchist, the poet, dramatist, humani- 
tarian, theosophist, dreamer, judge and statesman, 
even the iciest aces of the air — and tell the story 
of War, a tale of trenches, kings and arms ; blood, 
heroism and monstrous greed; vast far-reaching 

[ 170] 



THE ARTIST UNLEASHED 

causes and the slow, inevitable hell of effects — 
told from a viewpoint so inclusive that thrones 
are merely pawns in a Planetary Game. 

Inclusion is the first business of the writer who 
is truly allied with the modern element. Propa- 
gandists do not fill the picture. Yesterday the 
wreckers and agnostics- — to-day the specialists and 
onesided enthusiasts — to-morrow, the embodiers, 
the includers. 



1 171 T 



i6 
VALLEY ROAD GIRL 



THE Valley Road Girl, who gave us the 
title, and helped us to see how the New 
Race will become in due time the 
planetary hive, asked not to appear in 
this book. A letter this morning asks it again. 
She is in the stress and heat of a series of ordeals, 
learning what it means suddenly to be parted from 
friends and the centre of her work. A wise and 
sensitive young woman — I rather thrill over her 
sufferings. We don't commiserate; we congrat- 
ulate, when one is called to a stretch of particu- 
larly stiff and solitary going. We know that one 
must be passionately worthy to take the big-cali- 
bred ordeals. There is pain to all births — pain, 
the precursor of greater joys. Pain is not the ex- 
pansion of the flower to the sun; that is joy, that 
comes afterward. Pain is the necessary rupturing 
of the bud-sheaths before the final unfolding into 
the new dimension. Pain is within, inarticulate — 
merely finds a correspondence in some outer cause. 
Part of the Valley Road Girl's letter follows: 
[172] 



VALLEY ROAD GIRL 

... It hurt to let that last Lamentation go to 
you. I thought of the times when I had put up 
a braver fight, bolstered only with pride. But 
pride is low now, and still dwindling in the glass. 
Even the gods withdraw from the pathetic. They 
love us more when we challenge with doubt than 
when we implore. The many are God-fearing. 
They must have some divine power to shift their 
responsibility upon. They can ask the Flame to 
cleanse them, but quail at working out their own 
salvation. I have done some crying out to God, 
but I am finished. The one good path I have is 
Work — self-expression every day. 

I made another mistake — in looking back. Re- 
gret identifies us with the past and impedes prog- 
ress. Youth is smileless, inclined to regard to- 
day's struggles as ultimate evil," but gradually we 
learn that all things pass. To consider every- 
thing as in transition, we place ourselves in the 
very current of growth. . , . For rapid journey- 
ing, we must travel light. We can only carry 
along the spirit of things — the essence of our joys 
and lessons. That's what I have from Chapel 
days. 

I blush for many hours since. Sometimes I 
have felt as if I were on a vast plain and there was 
no God nor earth nor the quality of love any- 
where, but only I — deathless — in long, hideous 
travail, all life to be tested against this Me ! . . . 



How I want to 


write ! 


Every day more 


awe 


enfolds the dream. 


Days 


bring me closer to 


the 


i 


[173] 





THE HIVE 



Town. The war has deepened the hearts of all 
the young people here, especially the women. 
Young women are very wonderful to me. They 
have a certain loveliness of body that comes 
of girl-whiteness within — thoughtful tenderness 
about them, and something else, a lightness that 
may be just youth. It attracts me because I 
have never felt it. 

I do not care if the gods laugh at my ambitions 
to write. By the very sign that we are victims 
of matter now, we shall become victors. I want 
the bottom — down among the deeps of pain, 
where all the sorrow of the world is my sorrow; 
all tears, my tears. ... I am not ready for the 
Hive. No compromise. To accept less in one's 
work than the dream — that is failure. 

The Valley Road Girl is eighteen. She has 
hardly been away from the little town by the lake 
shore. She is held to it queerly still. I expect 
her to make the place long-lived in the memory of 
many novel readers. I see the big book of the 
country-side about her — a gallery of quaint and 
curious faces — done with her stern, sweet power. 
I have seen this big book building about her, as I 
see the top trays of The Abbot's Sea Chest. These 
are the days of her sketching and tearing down. 
Deep draughts of life call to her, deeps of religion, 
deeps of cosmic memory — and all about is the lit- 
tle town. The meaning has come to her at last. 
Already she has turned to love the nearest; lov- 
ing the nearest will unfold the big book and set 

[174] 



VALLEY ROAD GIRL 

her free. Six hundred pages I call for— the leis- 
urely vibration, terrible intensity of romantic mo- 
ments, passion of the fields, the hideous mockery 
of narrow, brittle lives, the country-wife worn 
glassy with routine and insane monotony, and the 
young of the countryside — quick bloom, pure 
youth falling into coarseness before its form is 
finished, the real and immortal behind it all. 
These are her properties. Hundreds of pages 
have been written and prayerfully destroyed. 
Thus is she setting herself free. 

I have a paper of hers on the spiritual adven- 
tures of a smileless child — which I liked much 
when it came in, more than two years ago. The 
Valley Road Girl is close to us in all our prepar- 
ing and building; so that these chapters would be 
strange without her voice: 

. . . Fire was always terrible, so my first as- 
pirations were caused by fear of hell below. Be- 
fore that, I had wanted to laugh when told to 
pray. As I grew, I thought much of the heavenly 
state, but could find only vague pictures. Re- 
cently I asked a country minister his idea of 
heaven, and he seemed uncertain. He could only 
assure me that it was a desirable place. Yet chil- 
dren always wonder about their destination, ques- 
tioning as they journey. 

I started early to pray — a grim affair; at first 
crying out through fear or hurt. God was too 
awful for such intimacies so I took the Christ fig- 

[175] 



THE HIVE 



ure of the Trinity into my confidence. Just here 
came a strange transition. It didn't seem suffi- 
cient for me to think those prayers : I felt I must 
state them clearly or my wish might be ambigu- 
ous. Even to-day, I find that only expressing a 
thing simplifies it for me. 

If there were acquaintances whose lives were 
touched with beauty or romance, I prayed for 
them, but mostly named my wants. I made the 
discovery that the intensity put forth in holding 
the image of a desire brings it into the world. 
Man may call the answer God, but that seems his 
own power. I have sometimes thought of Will 
with its divine kindred, Wisdom and Love, as the 
Three Who stood first before His Face. 

To-day we dream, and to-morrow our hands 
are filled. I remember the early Chapel days 
when the Old Man would say, "Be careful what 
you want — you are apt to get it," — with a great 
laugh and mystery playing about his words. 
How truly one comes to realise that. When I 
started at Stonestudy, the town-people used to ask 
how we were taught, — if our English and story- 
structure were principally considered as in the 
schools. I could only tell them, "Oh, no, not like 
school!" Then I tried to explain Chapel and 
they wondered how that manner of education 
could make us writers. Yet our writing improved 
with the days. Work, a few weeks old, embar- 
rassed us with its defects. 

Then I actually tried to discover just how we 
were being helped. To a young aspirant, there is 

[176] 



VALLEY ROAD GIRL 



awe about an artist; we had come to listen. The 
same thoughts expressed in homely words 
wouldn't have quickened us. The Old Man's 
sentences were rich with figures that clarified 
everything. We began to see Stonestudy. About 
this time at home I used to start anything that in- 
terested me, "I've got a picture " Chapel had 

helped me, as only one can help another, by quick- 
ening the imagination. 

That was what drew me to the Little Girl — 
her vivid impression of things. She could make 
her listener see also. Speaking of children whom 
school had overwhelmed, she used to tell us of 
their "lacking eyes" and the world that had 
crushed them, as the "solid world." ... I think 
that was the secret of her faith in fairies and Na- 
ture's most elusive agencies. I listened doubt- 
fully at first, for school had tampered with my 
once-ready belief. One had first to trust her 
words, "If you believe, you will see." And I re- 
called my early religious experiences, based on 
"According to your faith, be it unto you." 

This is the "really" religion— faith in the hid- 
den w r orid. We conceive its light gradually as 
the seed pushes its way upward through the soil. 
All religion that does not make the workshop a 
Chapel— the place for picturing heaven, is less 
than we know. I seem to confuse religion with 
the stimulating of the imagination. It is because 
they are one to me. 

The Valley Road Girl has a beautiful sister 
who was rather reluctant to come to Stonestudy. 

[177] 



THE HIVE 



She did not think she could ever belong; had no 
thought ever of writing or taking part in our 
things, yet none of the young people ever brought 
us more than Esther. I found the following pages 
about these two sisters together among the writ- 
ings of the Little Girl : 

. . . On the floor below lived two girls who 
came often to visit their beloved friends in the 
attic. One was a year or so older than the other, 
and most serious and sober, constantly hunting for 
her own philosophy and making her own religion, 
praying for power and vision, fearing lest she fail 
at the appointed task, suffering over conditions, 
revolting at times, loving her work and her sister 
with an everlasting passion. That was the one 
whom we call the Valley Road Girl. 

The other was a perfect giver, born with the 
thought of her own smallness, unwilling to accept 
a different point of view on the subject from 
another. A spirit — wide eyes, frail body, living 
her life calmly, objecting to nothing, obeying oth- 
ers, loving all, frightening her parents with her 
absolute goodness. And that was Esther. 

When she came at last to Stonestudy, her cush- 
ion with the others round the fire had been waiting 
for many months. For we all knew her; though 
the Valley Road Girl we knew Esther belonged to 
us. One Chapel day later, when she remained 
at home, we wondered how we'd ever manage 
without her. . . . Occasionally Esther brought a 

[178] 



VALLEY ROAD GIRL 



paper with her and laid it under the black stone — 
a bit of verse, perhaps a dream, or something deep 
and mysterious from her soul. One day it was a 
picture of the Desert, I remember. . . . Noonday, 
the white heat of the sun reflected by the sand, 
the brown of a camel's eyes, the long road to 
travel — caravans— then night — the sound of low 
music, women dancing, the red of fires on black 
oily bodies of slaves. . . . Esther made us see it 

all. 

There were long days in the woods — spring 
quickening life in all things, We'd gather moss 
and violets and talk endlessly, Esther always so 
free these memorable days, and happy. It was 
the dance that set her free — her expression through 
the dance— a dancer's body and soul, her wonder- 
ful quality of forgetfulness of self, made her 
perfect. Literally she could surrender herself to 
the music, trust it, and be carried in perfect grace 
and rhythm. We watched her unfold, the beauty 
of her deepening in every way. Her joy in life 
grew. She became like a nymph in the pure light 
of summer. . . . 

As was set down in the other book,* it was the 
Little Girl who started these educational pro- 
ceedings. Less than four years ago I suggested 
that she remain home from school, and take a 
stroll with me down the Shore. I was a bit bored 

* Child and Country. 

[179] 



THE HIVE 



at the time, doubtless heavy with the sense of 
parental care. To my best knowledge, the Lit- 
tle Girl was in no way extraordinary. She does 
not seem so now. It seemed natural for her to 
turn in the chapter on "Tom" in this book. I 
did not think of it as a brimming thing for a child 
to perform. Incidentally Steve brought in an es- 
say last night on the young lovers and beauty 
lovers of the New Race, covering matters which 
I planned as necessary for me to do in this book. 
Weaving, that's really what a book from the 
group amounts to — weaving, more and more. 
From time to time in years to come, I hope to take 
a few weeks and spin a book. 9 

It is only in matters having to do with actual 
world-facts that the Little Girl ever reminds us 
that she is only finishing her second period of sev- 
ens. There is no one to whom I go more often 
for wisdom or consolation. Her comradeship is 
complete. Others forget the matter of age in re- 
lation to her. Her big friendship with the Val- 
ley Road Girl overrides four years of growth most 
formidable in the usual attachment. The soul is 
out of time and space. The same thing is more 
emphatically shown in the case of John and The 
Abbot — nine and seventeen. 

The Little Girl reads very little — not nearly 
so much as I do. She carries no weights. The 
slightest tendency toward precocity would sicken 

[180] 



VALLEY ROAD GIRL 

me of the whole business. This growth and de- 
velopment which I speak of is not intellectual in 
the acquisitive sense. I take the young minds 
away from long division examples. One of those 
a day is plenty. Excessive use of the young brain 
is dangerous. One should handle brain-tissue with 
delicacy. One should learn well how to think, 
so as to escape lesion and avoid rupture of those 
most delicate fibres. Any strain sounds a warn- 
ing. The use and development of the brain from 
outside is only safe so long as the process is joy- 
ous. The development of the brain from within 
is natural and continually felicitous. No two 
processes are alike — for the Soul perfects the in- 
strument to serve Itself. In due time the brain, 
thus trained, will bring forth the one perfect and 
inimitable product. Trained by the world solely 
from without, its product is a mere standard at 
best. 

I have met absolutely no ill results, not even 
from the gentle encouragement of the practice of 
concentration among children. This is stiff 
brainwork for a time — stiff because the brain must 
be mastered. But the brain that has learned to 
listen for the voice of the Master within, is al- 
ready using the fruits of concentration, and as I 
have written before, the children master the dis- 
tractions more easily than developed personali- 
ties. One must learn how to think obediently 

[181] 



THE HIVE 



before one can silence the thoughts. One must 
silence the brain to hear the Soul, but one must be 
the Soul to silence the brain. 

Intellectual children have been brought to me 
several times. They lack the essential reverence. 
They wish to show me what they know ; their par- 
ents goad them into this showing. These are not 
the new race type that thrills us. ... I cannot 
help you out of a predicament if my hands are 
full of bundles. I cannot bring to you the one 
spontaneous utterance that you long for, if my 
brain is crowded with the things of to-day and 
yesterday. I place upon the ground my bundles, 
and give you a hand. I clear my mind of all its 
recent and immediate acquisitions, and by the very 
force and matrix of your need (if I am the valu- 
able teacher) I supply, from the infinite reservoir 
of massed experiences, an intuitional answer that 
will not leave you as you were. 

. . . God pity the good little brain-pans so 
heavily piled in public schools, and the brave lit- 
tle memories so cruelly taxed. I want to brush 
all junk away from them, let their souls breathe, 
let them become as little children, show them how 
the greatest workmen and the master-thinkers are 
great and masterful, simply because they have 
learned how to become as little children. 



[182] 



17 
BEAUTY 



W 



E develop through expression. I 
find these paragraphs among many 
of the Little Girl's for which there 
is no place here : 



. . . Everything in pouring out one's dreams 
and thoughts, one's very soul into words! It is 
relief, fulfilment; it completes all thoughts and 
dreams; it gives them strength. They are only 
half-powers if left unexpressed. In the moments 
of great outpouring, order forms — the inner or- 
der that is lasting and divine, the order that every 
man must have running rhythmically through 
him, before his great task can be given him by the 
Master. If man lives in truth, he lives in order. 
There is no truth without order — no order with- 
out truth. They are one at the top. There are 
no mistakes in all the Holy Universe. 

We speak much of the Master. As every ar- 
tist becomes significant, I think he is more and 

[183] 



THE HIVE 



more conscious, deep within, of the presence of 
one whose word is absolute. The great artist 
isolates himself from criticism — that is, he may 
listen to the observations of a child or the young- 
est critic and find values, yet his life is passed 
in doing things others cannot do, and for which 
there are no criteria. He loses the sense of all laws 
at the last, in the great ebullition of his soul — 
to get its records down. He is not ignited with 
expression as formerly, because he is expression. 
His establishment in flesh is for that, and no 
other reason. His Master nears. I think of Tol- 
stoi so intimately and Carlyle in these things. . . . 
We are close, in our best moments, to the Shop 
Itself. Kipling touched this mystic arrangement 
in his inimitable U envoi, "When earth's last pic- 
ture is painted " 

More and more life teaches us the treachery of 
matter, as it teaches us how to love. One by one 
the things we turn to, vanish, leaving us rent and 
crying out. Thus we learn to turn to the Un- 
seen. We long at last for our particular arche- 
type who embodies potentially the ideal of parent 
and teacher and beloved. The last tearing tor- 
rential love of the flesh is for the mate, the first 
of our more purely spiritual aspirations for the 
Master. . . . The good days of apprenticeship 
give us the basic ideal of him — the pure work- 
manship, the love of truth, need for utter com- 
prehension with few words — the love of one 

[184] 



BEAUTY 



another, yet the absolute essential so hard to learn, 
to cling to nothing in the realm of change — all 
these are incentives to the quest of the Master. 
More and more we succeed in turning our love to 
what we still call the Unseen from old habit. The 
very love that you turn to the Master builds the 
path by which he comes to you. He can only 
appear in your own thought-form. . . . 

It comes to us so often that we make our own 
heavens. So many forget that we require beauty 
as well as goodness and truth. Not sages alone, 
not saints alone — but artists, workmen and play- 
ers in beauty, as well as in love and wisdom. 
The Master will come to you in your own thought- 
form; your heaven will fill your own conception. 
Saints of the elder bigotries will have angels with 
feathers and peasant feet. Those who have clung 
so hard to their bodies, must galvanise them again 
with rheumatism and senility and mortgage-rid- 
den minds. 

I tell them here to be careful what they dream 
— to take all the loves, the safe things, love of 
child and mother and mate, love of comrades, 
the passion for dying for another ... to take 
Nature's perfect things, — the grains, the fruits, 
bees, stars, devas, poems — majesty of mountain, 
strength of the field, holy breath of sea — the 
highest moments of song and thought and meet- 
ings ... to take all that is consummate for the 
thought-form— to build the coming of the Mas- 

[185] 



THE HIVE 



ter in that — light from the Unseen — to build 
for eternity. . . . The Master can only show you 
that much of Himself as your own highest picture 
contains. . . . This is the practice of his pres- 
ence, so liberating to the minds of dreamers and 
workmen and mothers. 

Steve has done some thinking on the quest of 
beauty in relation to the young lovers of the 
New Race. The rest of the chapter is his writ- 
ing: 

Beauty is the lustre shining from within, be- 
cause of the sheer intensity of being. It is proof 
of spiritual battles won, a gift earned by ages of 
renunciation, martyrdom, and self-sacrifice. It is 
manifest balance, order and serenity gained from 
isolation and self-conquest. The glow seen about 
the heads of saints is really there. It is a splen- 
dour not of earth, the same ray from which beauty 
is drawn. 

A certain tragic joy and a terrible serenity, that 
is mistaken for melancholy, often goes with 
beauty. It is the result of turning back volun- 
tarily for work in the world, renouncing possible 
bliss for the service of humanity. Chief among 
the spiritual victories mentioned, is this turning 
back, facing the stream of evolution again, and 
all its cold metal, for new work. So its light is 
a light from behind — a reflection to the world of 
the wonders ahead. 

Beauty is an indication of the weave of one's 
[186] 



BEAUTY 



higher life, of developed discrimination, material 
proof of the perfecting ordination of the life, will 
and emotions. All that is beautiful is good, all 
that is good must be beautiful. Ugliness is false 
and fleeting, a confession of sickness and turmoil 
within. There can absolutely be no great love 
without a sheer worship of beauty, not for itself, 
not from the sesthetic standpoint — no tempera- 
mental moth-man ethics — but the calm mastery 
of its inner meaning, which is mastery of life it- 
self. 

This does not mean that we must love things 
merely because they are beautiful, but because of 
the truth we know to be in them, manifest in their 
beauty. Also it means that we must never accept 
a thing merely because it is demonstrated, or seek 
truth for truth's sake. Beauty is the one lasting 
criterion. 

As soon as we truly see these things, we know 
the secret of real love, which is beauty's expres- 
sion. The lover is no longer lover only, but love- 
master — all domination of the sexes then becomes 
a slavery of the past. The lover is parent, 
mate and child in one. Each is also the other's 
teacher. 

At the beginning these lovers give each other 
complete freedom, knowing that nothing can be 
maintained that is held; that joyous freedom is its 
own wise bondage. The finding of the lover is 
never the end of the quest as in the world. 
Rather, it is the beginning. Never is there a ly- 
ing back in satisfaction or inconsequence. That 

[187] 



THE HIVE 



would be failure for themselves as well as their 
children. Growth is the goal. Growth goes on 
after the mating at a rate never before approached, 
for each has been opened, liberated. Every re- 
lation is evident alternately in this growth, par- 
ent and child, teacher and pupil, master and 
disciple, madonna and messiah. At certain high 
moments, the other appears as the Master himself; 
through his eyes the mysteries of the universe are 
seen. , 

The three-ply love yearns to give, knowing that 
by giving all one gains all. It yearns to protect, 
to mother, to love failings and make them vir- 
tues. It loves the failings as well as the gifts, 
treasuring all the little humanesses of the loved 
one, searching them out zealously. Never are 
they foolish enough to expect perfection at first. 
Every fault is told point-blank, at any cost of 
pain or injury to the other. For it is the god- 
given privilege of each to bring suffering to the 
other, because he loves that other more than life, 
more than self, more than happiness, and it is un- 
derstood that their mutual goal is the priceless 
heritage, perfection. Nothing short of perfec- 
tion remains. For this all else, even life, is 
a paltry price. There is no hiding the truth. 
This is the supreme test for great loves, great 
friendships. Both mates are equal. Equal- 
ity — the word comes to mean more than wor- 
ship. 

This philosophy is justified by the law of sac- 
rifice. That which we love more than life is ours 
more wholly than ourselves, by the great law. 

r 188 ] 



BEAUTY 



In fact, we cannot belong to ourselves; we must 
work upon ourselves until we are big enough to 
cast body mind and soul in the heart of another, 
without fear. Separateness — the pitiful sense of 
self, has long been the prime illusion of the world, 
the cause of all lust, wars and torments. Those 
who are not great enough lovers to surrender all 
to their love find pain and disparity throughout. 
They have yet to learn that all that belongs to the 
self-willed, only half belongs, for it has not been 
given its freedom. 

In loves such as the New Age is bringing in, 
true creativeness is touched. In worshipping 
both the soul of her child and that of her mate 
more than her own, the mother is given for the 
moment a beam from the divine shaft from the 
Creator. For that moment she has over-reached 
herself. Just so is the new love constantly over- 
reaching itself in the cause of the loved one, a di- 
vine madness the world has not begun to dream 
of — to belong and to have, to be in and through 
and around the loved one. Thus to over-reach is 
to create. The ordinary one must become ex- 
traordinary when loved in this god-like manner. 
To over-reach oneself — -that is the cry of the 
New ! . . . To think or act in any way that will 
hurt the self becomes impossible then, for the self 
is truly become the other lover. 

Blindness of passion is far from the nature of 
things in the new loves. Or rather such passions 
have been washed and redeemed until they are 
self-governing. There is all the difference 

[189] 



THE HIVE 



between them and the world idea of passion, as 
between adoration and infatuation. Deep wa- 
ters and deep characters hold to their channels. 
Only shallow and frothy currents are loud and 
turbulent. . . . Again it is the three in one. 
How could one hold a mad destroying passion for 
one in whom the parent child and master are 
equally dominant? Always the spirit of tender- 
ness is there like an unseen third. Thus passion 
has become compassion, and the earth love is seen 
truly for the first time partaking of the nature 
of the infinite love which holds the universe to- 
gether. This is the source of calm, of will-less- 
ness. 

The elder generation, judging all things 
from the standpoint of the self will, is dumb- 
founded. Such iron repression among children is 
beyond its imagination. The elder generation 
goes on living sharkish and predatory lives, ex- 
perimenting with repression after too much get- 
ting and taking and licentiousness. It concen- 
trates terribly on repression, throwing up about 
itself temporary breastworks, developing cruel red 
rays of personal will which at best is but a defiant 
pugnacity. Its eyes grow red and voice savage. 
For the time the gargoyles of the ancient self are 
locked in the lower room, but they are not mas- 
tered. All personal will is but a confession of in- 
ordination within. Where there is inner order 
and beauty, it is not needed, becomes indeed an 
affront to the most high. 

The beautiful will-lessness which marks the re- 
[190] 



BEAUTY 



lation of the sexes of the New Order is the key 
to the freedom of the future. Tiger and ape are 
transformed into white presences — the mutinous 
slaves of the earth-self become cosmic servants. 



[191] 



' 



i8 
SHUK 



1WAS talking to a group of young artists 
in Chicago. There was a boy there who 
seemed disturbed because the others dared 
to be natural in my presence, ^nd talk about 
themselves. I was quite at ease, enjoying myself, 
and getting altogether as much respect as I de- 
served. . . . This lad walked with me to the 
train. I wanted to take him home. I liked his 
voice and his hand and his mind. I thought at 
first that he could not mean all he said, but I was 
wrong about that. Reverence is sometimes very 
hard to take, but the one who brings it has the 
pure surface of receptivity. The boy said, as my 
train pulled out : 

"No, I can't come now. There's a month to 
be spent at home in Michigan, and a season's play- 
ing with an orchestra up in the lake resorts, but 
after that — say October, I'll come to Stonestudy." 
That was exactly what he did. He had it 
[ 192] 



S H U K 



all planned months ahead. It's Shuk's* way — a 
mathematical mind, a crystal mind. The theoso- 
phists would say that he belonged to the intel- 
lectual ray. . . . We are always better with Shuk 
in the room. He comes half way to meet our 
process of lighting up, which is the devotional 
process; in fact, Shuk incorporated himself in our 
ideals in exchange for a year or two of living the 
life at Stonestudy. . . . These things never die. 

A raincoat, a black bag — these are Shuk's pos- 
sessions, all weight and measure minimised, even 
to the kind of white paper which wears best and 
packs best. Shuk means order. A page of his 
"copy" is a rest to the eye. There is a finished 
quality to his sentences. My tendency is to rush 
into a mental clean-up when he enters the room. 
I'm not impressing these details as his virtues. 
Shuk's virtues are cosmic. He will presently be 
telling the big tales, and telling them fast. 

As a group, we are learning to come and go 
from each other. We have learned well not to 
lean— rather to anticipate the Law and leave the 
beloved when the tendency to cling becomes too 
keen. . . . There is a time to come and a time to 
go. I always think of the Master Jesus, leaving 
His disciples— saying that they would not find 
the Comforter within, if He remained with them 
always. 

Shuk had much to do in bringing home to us 

* Herman S. Schuchert. 

[193] 



THE HIVE 



this valuable concept. We had a way of thinking 
the world would come to us on the Lake Erie bluff. 
It would. It did. But we were getting fat and 
baronial; a bit fat of brain, perhaps. . . . Better 
than that, the gaunt, lean face forever at the 
window-panes of civilisation. . . . Comrades are 
always together. Big meetings, easy partings. One 
does not know how close he is to another, until 
their thoughts spark warm over a lot of mileage 
— the immortality of it all stealing in through 
the soft airs of night, perhaps. 

I teach the young ones to stand alone at every 
chance. The idea is to make them penetrate for 
themselves, as swiftly as possible, the main tricks 
and illusions of matter; to make them see past 
any doubt that to be worldly-minded is to be in- 
ferior. Still they must see this for themselves. I 
formally renounced parentage in the case of the 
Little Girl. I take all my authority from the 
younger boys at frequent intervals — especially 
when they have been real mates : 

"Don't advise with me, 55 I tell them. "Show 
what you know about living. . . . Do it your 
way. If you begin to botch it, I'll come in and be 
a regular parent again, but the idea is to set you 
loose." 

These matters come out naturally in relation 
to Shuk. He'll be surprised to read this. None 
of the young ones ever adequately credit the fact 
that I do a lot of sitting at their feet. . . . We 

[194 3 



SHUK 

could see the world as one piece better with Shuk 
in the room. His intense listening pulled my 
eyes constantly. He wanted to know about sto- 
ries—about writing stories. His presence made 
us all better workmen because he was so zealous 
to become one. I had long been absorbed in the 
romantic side of world-politics, but Shuk dec- 
orated the subject with a new romance. . . . The 
farther away a country is, the more we know about 
it from a fiction standpoint. His mental forms 
are very strong. Shuk and I have practically 
covered the same run of thoughts in a morning's 
work- — our machines a mile apart — no prearrange- 
ment. But this has worked out so often as to cease 
to be a novelty. The Little Girl's letters have 
often crossed with mine, carrying the same 
spiritual unfoldment — a four daj^s' journey dis- 
tant. . . . ' 

Another realisation related with Shuk's coming, 
is that I do not belong as the master of a school 
in the economic sense. There was much detail 
at Stonestudy, much householder's management 
required. I wouldn't have given it up, if I had 
been unable to do that part, but it was a waste of 
force — wretched economy for me to take charge 
of such affairs. We plan to support ourselves, but 
I cannot run a school, apportion tasks, or puzzle 
devotedly among the meshes of finance. This 
part of the work in California will doubtless be 
taken care of by those who do it well and profit- 

[ 19.5 ] 



i 



THE HIVE 



ably. There have been moments when I wanted 
to go among all the schools — happen in, stay an 
hour or a week — until the children and teachers 
forgot me, so I could find my own among the 
many. . . . But again it occurs to me that wiser 
plans than mine are behind it all. Those who 
are ready, come; numbers will take care of them- 
selves ; all we need to do is to make the most of 
the nearest, and keep up our song in such accord 
as we can in the midst of the world's sacrificial 
madness — many girls' voices now, for the war 
has plucked the boys. . . . 

Some of the things of Shuk's which I chose for 
this book were about the big war and are not 
profitable discussions now, but with his paper in- 
cluded in an earlier chapter, and one or two small 
things here, his quality can be seen. This is a 
letter to the Old Man : 



... I haven't ceased to follow the Wars. Big 
one inside. Tremendous flights, dizzy careenings, 
impossible falls. Am tramping noisily through 
the forbidden garden of Books. Am becoming 
more and more vividly aware of Life, above 
actuality, beyond sorrow, interior to joy. Vital 
and thrilling peace to all your endeavours. . . . 
Enclosed a paragraph or two on tallying off the 
world-war within, with the world-war without: 

Evil is stupid mixing of good things into in- 
harmony. Evil is simply ignorance. Ignorance 
does not fade away, but must be worked out, worn 

[196] 



S H U K 

down. War is evil in this process. Man's 
higher nature is naturally at war with ignorance, 
manifesting in his lower nature. If man had 
always kept at this war against the domination of 
the lower self, he would never have needed another 
war to jar and jog him along. But man decided, 
in ignorance, that he had no cause for war with 
the lower self. This was his first illusion. The 
next mistake was natural. Man thought he would 
get rid of evil by killing off the lower selves of 
other men. All due to his first error in looking 
outside instead of in. 

It's all wrong to think we must leave our 
own houses in order to fight the greatest battles 
conceivable. If we do not accept the fight within 
ourselves, we shall certainly have the same fight, 
once or twice removed, forced upon us. . . . 

Whatever portion of humankind is chastened 
and quickened by this big field-war and sea-war, 
is the first fruits of a nobler race. Man has had 
countless and continuous opportunities of doing 
this purifying process to himself in privacy and 
peace ; instead, he has consistently, with rarest 
exceptions, used his will to serve the lesser self, 
or deal with the lesser selves of other men. Now, 
in these years, every man who failed, will learn 
the lesson, because it will be forced upon him. 
If our wisdom is not so great and old as we 
hope, if we have in the long past thrown away 
our chances, then we shall surely go out and fare 
as the others fare now — in exactly the right pro- 
portion. 

[ 197] 



THE HIVE 



Killing another doesn't work as a means of self- 
correction. Hereafter, I'm interested in correct- 
ing myself. There is very little outside work left 
to do. This is a commonplace, of course, yet it 
reminds me that the highest wisdom is something 
grandly simple and easy. Murder is an ag- 
gravated waste of both time and opportunity. 

Yet I am at peace with nobody, not even my- 
self. Peace ought to be more intense than war, 
and until it is, we shall have to go through many 
wars to arrive at any kind of peace. Many slav- 
eries is the price of freedom. 

One who fears will be brought up facing mon- 
ster fears, until he learns next time that his per- 
sonal fears were too petty to mention. One who 
has greed and envy will surely be made a pawn in 
a game of greed so colossal that perhaps, in a fu- 
ture time, he will have no interest in neighbour- 
hood greeds, but will have learned to see and to 
desire the whole world. His greed has been 
stretched into a passion for dominion; and the 
most fascinating field for empire he will discover 
within himself. 

So wherever we stand, we can't lose out. We 
can choose to do good, better, best — but without 
choosing, nothing less than all right can happen. 

The brighter facts are that all these warring 
energies, whether of men or ordnance, are the force 
of one God, energies working out of the muddles 
men made. Man has disturbed the balance. 
Man now makes a sacrifice in order to restore 
equilibrium, to release the powers he misused. 

[198] 



S H U K 

The greatest conceivable struggle must sooner 
or later come between the higher and lower na- 
ture of every living thing. Man is now prepar- 
ing himself, collectively and individually, for this 
final conquest. His prime illusion seized him 
when he turned away from his own faults, to cor- 
rect the faults of his brother. The secondary 
illusion is that the brother will not be able to care 
for his own faults. The third is that we must help 
our brother correct himself. The fourth is that if 
he won't do it himself, in the way we say, we will 
do it for him. 

The world (and this means me) is just learning 
the rudiments of war, just finding out how much 
vitality man has, how much courage, the stupid- 
ity of all fear, the size of the globe, the depth and 
possibilities of the elements, including the human 
soul ; is perceiving more of life and accepting in- 
tenser vibrations than ever before on this terra. 
All this knowledge will go into the True Peace 
some da)^. But in these nearby years, men are 
prayerfully eager to get back "home," where all 
these godly lessons may be forgotten. 

Real War will positively show man that he 
must remember what he is taught. When he 
comes "home," he will enlist immediately in the 
interior struggle with his lower self. His war 
with other men will train him to fight with the 
greatest enemy on earth, his own ignorance. 

I have already enlisted in this big war. My 
first victory was in seizing the fact that the world 
is me and I am the world and nothing to the con- 

[ i99] 



THE HIVE 

trary. The universe rises and falls with me, sub- 
jectively. The goal is to make it — objectively. 

I am locked with impatience these days. 

After that, comes fear. 

I may go to the red fields to learn the nonsense 
about fear. Of course I can theorise it now per- 
fectly, and practise it at periods. But I want it 
steadily, the non-wobbling wisdom. Already I 
have conquered some fatuousness in myself. Out 
of my jubilation I write to you. ... Of course, 
the Many is not a model to follow. The "Many" 
is a picture in every man's mind, composed 
of the inferior things that all other men do. 
. . . Inclusion — intensity — love — creativeness — 
these Stonestudy precepts contain all the story. 
They are certainly the way out and up and over 
into Life. 

Shuk has done a little sketch or two on the 
big Romance of the new social order: 

Humour, universality, the highest good will, 
he writes, are the symbols that flame from the 
temple of the New Race. . . . Everywhere ap- 
pear children of the renovating, re-vitalising, more 
cosmic tribe. They are easily recognised. The 
hope of a full and decent future is with them. 

They will do little according to their immedi- 
ate predecessors, and much by an inner light of 
their own. Being wise and simple and not de- 
structive, they will gratefully accept all that has 
proven true for earlier peoples. But they will in- 

[ 200 ] 



S H U K 



stinctively have nothing at all to do with the tra- 
ditions based on three-score-and-ten, or any other 
of the unfortunately solid viewpoints that frost 
the world to-day. 

They love the world, have come to claim it 
whole, to reclaim it from deluded ancestors who 
were solemnly, from birth, bent upon deeding and 
selling and stealing and fencing in bits of the 
planet's surface. Forerunners of this happier race 
have shown themselves to be masters of materials, 
true workmen in the solid stuffs ; but by their sense 
of humour they are saved from any impulse to 
seize and sit upon fragments of earth. 

These new ones are born with an urge towards 
unity. Their task, to set the world in order. 
Their means, not so much a rearrangement of ob- 
jects as a very intense activity along the roads of 
Beauty and Truth, in a co-operation unstudied 
and normal with the rest of mankind and with 
the Igniting Principle. 

It may be observed that Beauty and Truth 
are too vague to produce effective action in a solid 
world. This is invariably a saying of the mate- 
rial-minded, however virtuous they may be. It is 
they who loudly demand a dull utility over and 
above Beauty, and apart from it. It is they who 
have agglomerated the chaos that is in this hour 
threshing about in dust and blood. Their sober 
iniquities are the fertiliser to force the seed of the 
New Race. 

It is not a cosmic blunder that the great minds 
of the world are found in art, including the su- 

[201 ] 



THE HIVE 



preme art of mystic religion — and seldom in the 
arena of statecraft. The world was never man- 
aged from a senate chamber; the cosmos is not 
guided by a king. When rulers of the past have 
become great figures, that greatness usually rested 
upon their gift of poetry, their love of art or wis- 
dom, or some religious quality. 

Poems of twenty words have outlived the might 
of forty wars. A great book is a higher achieve- 
ment than a sweeping political move. The dull- 
est changeling with an obsession may set his seal 
upon a war to the death of ten million men, but 
in the few lines of a true poem are stored the 
honey of millenniums of human life. A genuine 
work of art is more potent and practical than any 
blood-bought wall of tribal separation, more vital 
and immediate than the doings of armies. To 
judge of this properly, one need only know both 
kings and poets. 

Of the early kings of Rome, it is Numa who 
is remembered — and he was in harmony with 
Celestial Order. Of countless other Roman fig- 
ures, the average mind turns first to Csesar, who 
was a literary man, and whose passion to write 
outlasted every march of his legions. Greece had 
kings and statesmen and great generals, yet it is 
her wise men who stand foremost. The conquer- 
ing Alexander is famed chiefly because he was the 
unwitting distributor of Grecian beauty. In fact, 
Greek history began with Homer, the poet, and 
American history with Columbus, the dreamer 
who is still our creditor. The mystics of old 

[ 202 ] 



SHUK 

China reached for the Torch of Light, and they 
might have attained a true dominion over the 
planet, had not their fear-inspired kings built a 
Wall and gelded the Empire once for all. Gau- 
tama Buddha gave up kingcraft in order to gain 
a higher mastery. Mohammed lived on the Road. 
Jesus the Christ set free an energy in the world 
that is onfy gaining its real momentum after two 
thousand years— and he firmly refused a material 
crown. 

... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn 
afternoon, the building of a sphinx or a pyramid 
— these are not subject to time or conditions. 
They remain. 

So the Children who are the hope of the world 
are not dismayed at the medley of illusions 
emanating from the so-called ruling class. Em- 
perors and premiers do not get very much done 
either way; they themselves abandon their own 
works over night. They are deserving of pro- 
found sympathy. They only spread out more 
manful chaos to be set straight by the master 
craftsmen — -the artists, humorists, vitalists, mys- 
tics. . . . Beauty is the sun-bright flash of the 
Infinite. 

With duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the 
Singers come, the Builders, the Quickeners of man. 
The Unforgettables of the so-called past were of 
this stock. Their leisure is deep — of a sort that 
sustains the finitudes. 

All the good goals of yesterday are to be 
counted as mile-posts. Direction is more impor- 

[203] 



THE HIVE 



tant than any imaginable goal; unvarying ten- 
dency is more direct and splendid than any creed ; 
the white path of the quester is more precious 
than a stationary heaven. 

The modern children cannot stop on this side 
of the horizon because they are creators. Life is 
their religion. Their rites are broad and deep as 
man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as 
dawn. 

They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fash- 
ion the Upanishads in their own hearts. They 
study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for the 
divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of 
numbers with Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the 
Mohammedan thinkers who connected Aristotle 
with Moses. These names do not belong to the 
past. The many Buddhas are perpetually modern. 
Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. Heracleitus and 
Plato are still living springs. 

In just the same sense, the children of the 
New Race are old as the Pelasgian Zeus, though 
in point of time they are here for work and play 
in 1920. But their vitality reality, beauty, 
power and achievement — these are affairs of 
all time. 



[204] 



19 
IMAGINATION 






MANY mystics have lost touch en- 
tirely with the deep sunken abut- 
ments of the spiritual edifice — the 
footings in matter. They are deeply 
wise in the mysteries and unfoldments of contem- 
plation, but lose their way like mindless lambs in 
the world. We idealise a practical mysticism 
which dares to walk the earth in the heat of the 
day, dares to contemplate the stars as outposts 
of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at 
last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne 
of Itself. . . . 

Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency 
to make us see the big Unseen politics and di- 
plomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are 
a few paragraphs from one of his letters which 
show the quality: 

. . . Kings and presidents are the most ham- 
pered of men. Great generals are silly without 
their armies. To remove externals from us, to 

[205] 



THE HIVE 



rid our minds of the illusive and the inessential, 
is simply to clear us for action. Even a gunner, 
in taking aim, regards the object or enemy as an 
abstraction, and focuses his whole attention upon 
his own instrument, his sights. If he actually 
looks at the enemy, he will not hit him. The 
billiardist first glances over the entire table, then, 
to make a true shot, concentrates his full attention 
upon the tip of his own cue. Perhaps the great 
leader of armies does not regard individuals or see 
them as men, but as extensions of his own body, 
and in time of stress, he has forgotten them com- 
pletely save as abstract power for his use, and 
that use he determines interiorly. Even the most 
material-minded of men, in the crux of worldly 
and four-square events, sinks into deep and effec- 
tive cerebration. Can we, who realise this as a 
conscious and direct principle, do any less? 

I think the Guardians are sitting together a lit- 
tle way off, watching with grand interest, to see 
just how much of a mess mankind can make. 
Man is always given lavish supplies with which 
to create works of art that may prove equal in 
beauty and wonder to the universe itself. Man 
does not yet see art in these materials. 

He must open his eyes before the Powers are 
able to help him. The Guardians cannot oper- 
ate against man's will, because their will and his 
will, including yours and mine right now, are of 
one piece. The will of the Guardians is better 
trained and cleaner, because more experienced. 
. . . When men cease to shout for different things 

[206] 



IMAGINATION 



from the same Father, they stand a chance of get- 
ting the Father's attention. 

• •»••• 

We have had many astonishing hours in Chapel 
talking about these "Guardians," the arrangements 
above, as below, one Plan governing all. We do 
not care to bandy about the name of God a great 
deal, for we realise that He is most unseen when 
embodied in matter; that He is apt to be far from 
the mind that makes familiar with Him in words. 
Yet all stands for Him, all reveals Him. The 
farther we can see beyond mere eyesight, the more 
we realise that He is not standing exactly in per- 
son, just outside of the boundaries of matter. 

There are hierarchies, so to speak. There are 
messengers and couriers and charioteers, saints, pil- 
grims, angels, courtiers, priests and politicians, 
grades and authorities represented there, such as 
we find in Matter and Romance here. . . . Shuk 
and Steve and I used to hypothecate the existence 
of a White Council back of all the religious move- 
ments of the world. By humour and analogy and 
romantic speculation, we arrived at the point of 
view that the world religions are one at the top, 
and that initiates, illuminati, masters are stationed 
at intervals to help humanity up the slopes. We 
conceived the White Council as a centre of wisdom 
love and power, holding up the cup continually for 
revelation, guiding and guarding humanity's soul. 
We glimpsed the fact that the leaders of the 

[207] 



THE HIVE 



White Council might be beyond embodiment — 
at least in avoirdupois — the holy of all holy men* 
Only a most pure and potent messenger, we 
thought, would be permitted to reach this Inner 
Temple, this Shamballah, compared to which the 
Vatican is a salon open to the public and the 
monasteries of Thibet a concourse for pilgrims. 

After religion, we realised that there must be 
an upper centre for all that is represented here 
below so diversely in politics and nationalism. 
It couldn't be God Himself back of the dumas 
and senates, reichstags, diets and parliaments. One 
does not pass from elevator-boy to editor in chief 
in a great commercial office. If there were a White 
Council back of all the religious movements of 
the world, there must be a Big Mill back of all 
world-politics — a gathering of directors, ventur- 
ing to judge the problems of men because they had 
risen above them. . . . These men could want 
nothing material. We perceived them behind arm- 
ies and thrones, manipulating kings and diplo- 
mats and secret centres, in ways that even the 
closest agents did not understand. 

We concluded there must be another centre 
made up of the master-artists, bringing through 
into matter (as the world can stand it and as 
the little human instruments reach up for them), 
the great delivering beauties of song and story, 
paint and verse and tale. And this we called the 
Shop Itself. Sometimes we fancied that it was 

[208] 



IMAGINATION 



all too much, even to dream of going there some- 
time to see the forms, the marbles, the canvases, 
the manuscripts— the Artists themselves. . . . 
And then we realised that, just as all the arts and 
all the religions and all the political movements 
were one at the top, that Politics and Art and 
Religion were one at the next eminence; that the 
Inner Council and the Big Mill and the Shop It- 
self were one at the top, just as Wisdom, Love 
and Power are; as Goodness, Beauty and Truth 
are; as Father, Son and Holy Spirit are — three 
in one at the Top, and that was Himself. . . . 

And then we would rise from Chapel and go out 
and look at the lake — Steve and Shuk and I. 

Finally one day we were told that we had 
done some right good dreaming — that it was all 
true. We were advised that it was no affair 
of ours if other people didn't get it right away; 
that they would get it, . . . So we began to put 
these things in stories. They mean Romance to 
us. Queerly enough the stories are coming 
through — one long one especially, called Archer \ 
that shows the downhere activities of the Big Mill 
and the White Council and the Shop Itself. 

I have said it often in this book — that our 
culture consists of the quantity of properties that 
we have tallied off — the within with the with- 
out. The Kingdom is within, also the King; the 
Sky and the Nest are one; one are the heavens 

[209] 



THE HIVE 



and the homing heart that finds its peace in the 
deep vales where the adorable humanities come 
to be. The inmost and the uppermost are one. 

We are where the torch of consciousness is. 

We are in the body, or in the mind, or in the 
soul; we are in time or eternity, or we pass back 
and forth. . . . First we tally off the far outposts 
of the kingdoms without and within; first we are 
mere sentries learning to become clear-eyed and 
brave to stand alone — almost outsiders, having 
scarcely heard of the Kingdom, dimly conscious, 
but learning to become steady-eyed. Then we 
are called in a little — called in to become couriers 
on foot, running to and from among the outer 
provinces of th£ kingdom; then messengers to 
the Middle Countries; then Charioteers to the 
gates of the City; then ministers to the court of 
the King. . . . 

The day comes at last when we have audience 
with Him — when we rule with Him, when we 
become united with Him. From the throne It- 
self, then we perceive the outsiders, the sentries, 
the couriers, messengers, charioteers, the winged 
riders and the deep-down men of the dun- 
geons. . . . With the fine tranquillity of power, 
we measure forth to all, reverence, justice and 
grace. 



[210] 



20 

BOYS AND DOGS 



CHILDREN of the new social order love 
strange creatures; they are passionate 
about the care and protection of ani- 
mals, but until they are made to suffer, 
they are apt to be sceptical about the infallibility 
of their elders. They are usually forced into 
silence early. I have noted that their ideas are 
intrinsically at variance with parental ideas — 
about purity, sunlight, dancing, foods, religion, 
odours. ... It takes a good man to break a 
horse or a dog. In a sense break is the word, al- 
though I would accomplish it with enchantment 
rather than a gad. . . . This is invariable: 
"When the pupil is ready — the Master ap- 
pears — - — " an old occult saying, and another: 
"The first thing the Master does is to break the 

back of his disciple- " 

Stiffness of opinion, rigidity of holding to that 
which one has, preconception, deep-rutted habits 
of mind — all these are fatal to that swift and 

[211] 



THE HIVE 

splendid growth of the disciple when he first finds 
his teacher. For days the child is in a bewilder- 
ing series of changes — made over new each fort- 
night — reviewing lives of experience — razing the 
old structures to the very footings for new tem- 
ples of mind and soul. The child must be ready 
to give himself — must give himself utterly. The 
essential reverence is first required; the self is 
broken for all births; one gives one's self to gain 
all. I would not try to quicken a child who 
doubted what I was saying; and yet I have never 
sought to make myself unerring or infallible. I 
like to have the young ones make humour of my 
frailties, and at the same time believe there is 
something priceless in our better moments to- 
gether. There is no possibility of front or acting. 
I seek to make them practise the presence of the 
Divine in themselves. I tell them never to do 
anything alone that they would not do before 
me. I take away all sense of sin from them. I 
sometimes congratulate them on being especially 
close to us, because of mistakes. I seek to set them 
free in all their ways, stripping the last attraction 
from evil, jockeying them higher from a humor- 
ous and artistic point of view. I show them the 
banality of many popular and obvious evils, 
the dulness of paying the price for something off 
form and of questionable taste. 

There is a lot of humour and nobility about a 

[212] 



BOYS AND DOGS 



good dog and a good boy together. John has been 
sleeping for a few nights in a bit of a cabin with 
an open door. He picked up a friend down on 
the beach somewhere, the same that he described 
as "World Man Dog" in one of his letters. I 
liked the tone of his voice as he talked with this 
old loafer named Seaweed. . . . One evening I 
was sitting on the hill above the cabin, so still 
that even a bird would have mistaken me for a 
part of the landscape, 

World Man Dog came up the cabin grade. His 
head was down — thinking. His tail was straight 
out behind him, as a dog's tail is when very much 
engaged with his own thoughts. You could see 
that he was going to keep an appointment; it 
was evident that he was afraid he might be late. 
He did not see me, so completely was he engrossed 
in his own affairs. He went right on up to John's 
door, entered, gave a look round the shack, first 
eagerly, then to make sure. His face fell, his 
body sagged — down he slumped in the middle 
of the floor — utterly dejected. As plain as day: 

"Hell,— he ain't here !" 

A real dog trainer is a wise man. I used to 
raise collies and was around the benches some — 
watching the champions come and go. One old 
trainer talked to me : 

"Styles change in dogs," he said, "but a good 
dog doesn't change. He goes on and on. You 

[213] 



THE HIVE 



don't get the good collies here on the benches 
any more. This year they want the collie so 
fine that we have to pinch the brain out of his 
head and break his lung-room in two. Last year 
we bred for hair, not for body and brain. Look 
at that one " 

He pointed to an old sire that had three seasons 
of the bench and blue, a sweeper of prizes. I 
remember the time when such a head would have 
started a stealer anywhere. The old collie had 
not lost form, but styles had changed. A most 
stupid dog with a straight, narrow head had won 
— not the shepherd type at all, but the head of a 
Russian wolf-hound — a bit of the monster left 
in it, a drugged look in the small black eyes; 
hysteria there, and not fealty — madness and not 
soul. 

"We breed them for the cities now — for porches 
and parlours," the trainer added. "Yes, those 
great collie strains that we have been nurturing 
for centuries to all that is brave and hard and use- 
ful — we are putting the hair of the lap-dog on 
them now — long silky stuff, not for snow and 
sleet. The collie walks by himself these days. 
No, we won't altogether ruin the strain. Many 
individuals are spoiled, but the race had come 
too far and too long to be broken down by a few 
years of fancyfying." 

Of course, I was thinking of the children at 
[214] 



BOYS AND DOGS 



every stage of the talk — of city people and chil- 
dren. As a race, the city-bred have become too 
fine. Life has worn them thin — given them the 
drugged look about the eyes. The race will never 
get far in the art of living until it comes home 
to the land and the restful distances and free flow- 
ing airs. This is so true that it seems to risk wear- 
ing the eye and the mind* — to say it again. . . . 

It's good to see them — a boy and a dog together 
in the hills or down by the edges of the land. 
There was a piece of decent collie in a dog named 
Jack back on the lake shore. He was long in 
strength and courage, but a bit shy in obedience. 
As a work-dog, he was ruined by a man who knew 
less than he did, frequently the case in bringing 
up dogs and men— whipped at the wrong time, 
every forming endeavour in the pup-brain broken 
by that. He is seven or eight years old now . . . 
a clean dog, a very wise and kind dog, with a 
sly and quiet humour that seldom is cruel and 
never falls into horse play — a lover of many 
children and confident of an open door in many 
homes. 

I remember the dignity and beauty of his first 
appearance over the bank from the shore, almost 
timed to our arrival. We were tender to the collie 
in general, having passed years with them. Jack 
moved from one to another accepting embraces 
with a kindliness that mellowed that cloudy day. 
There was joy about it all. I stood back waiting 

[215] 



THE HIVE 



my turn with much self-control. He submitted to 
the welcome — to the last detail, and a little later 
refused refreshments with perfect courtesy. 

When we came back the second summer, we 
found that a bullet had broken Jack's right front 
leg. He had wintered out at times, had known 
much pain. It was not that he did not have good 
friends who would have taken him in, but I 
think Jack lost faith a bit in the pain and stress. 
There was grey about his muzzle. One day he 
sat in the centre of the little Chapel class. 

"Pd like to be as good a man as Jack is a dog," 
one of the boys said. 

"You'd be one more man," said another. 

The fact is Jack has filled his circle rather 
well. This thought came to me presently with 
fuller meaning. I regarded him with knowledge 
of three seasons. A clean dog, a gentleman, a 
master of himself, very courageous and slow to 
anger, impossible for small children to anger — 
a dog among dogs, but more than dog among men. 

"He has filled his circle," I said aloud. "What 
makes a man look less in these very virtues that 
Jack has mastered, is that a man's circle is larger, 
and he has not reached the time of fulfilment as 
Jack has. If the dog's accomplishments were sud- 
denly lifted from his circle and placed in a larger 
one, we would not be conscious of the fine integra- 
tion of virtues that keep us interested now." 

[216] 



BOYS AND DOGS 



Men, lost in the complications of cities, yearn 
for the simplicity of their early days on the 
farms ; and yet they could not go back. The sim- 
plicity they yearn for is ahead. That of the 
old country days is but a symbol of the cosmic 
simplicity in store for us. Tolstoi turned back 
to the peasants, yet the simplicity he craved was 
not there. 

The peasants are merely potential of what the 
New Race will be; the peasants themselves must 
suffer the transition — must have their circle wid- 
ened and feel their little laws and their little sense 
of order suddenly diffused over broad, strange sur- 
faces. Their cosmic simplicity will appear when 
the larger dimension is put in order. That which 
is lovely in any plane of being, is that which is 
in flower — when it has about filled its present cir- 
cle. We are not less, intrinsically, because our 
values are placed in a larger vessel, though we 
have a renovating sense of our own insignificance. 
There is an order of small men, so obviously a 
part of their very narrowness, that it becomes in- 
stantly repulsive to larger souls. Many of the 
latter have flashed off to the end of their tether 
for the time, preferring chaos, to the two by two 
neatness of small-templed men. 

A secret of growth lies in these observations. 
We fill a certain circle, restoring a kind of order 
in the chaos; and then the circle is suddenly 
widened and that which was our order and mas- 

[217] 



THE HIVE 



tery is loose and diffused within the larger orbit. 
Herein are the pangs of transition. We lose our 
way for the time in the vaster area, like a man who 
is unfamiliar with an estate just purchased. There 
is but one thing to do — to begin to work upon the 
new dimension. As we work, courage and pa- 
tience steal in. Presently comes the vision of the 
completed circle. When this comes, our labour is 
pinned to a fresh ideal, and we are safe. 

In a hundred ways I have found it true that 
the vision comes in the labouring hours. One may 
move for weeks about his new estate (or manu- 
script), planning this and that, but the glimpse 
of the cohering whole is denied him, until he has 
actually begun upon the nearest or most pressing 
task. This is the miraculous benefit of action 
again. In giving ourselves forth in action, the 
replenishment comes. The sense of self ceases to 
clutter the faculties as we bend and toil. 

The days that are added to our experience each 
bring this story in a different way : that the sense 
of self impedes reality on every hand ; that the loss 
of the sense of self in labour and service renders us 
instantly quick to the animations of the spirit, 
without which at least from time to time, a man 
belongs to the herd, and is lost, like all gregarious 
creatures, in the will of his superiors. 



[218] 



21 

THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 



THERE is a man here who has found 
peace. I made a pilgrimage to his 
house. A boy from the village went 
with me part of the way up the moun- 
tain. The Pacific was presently visible upon the 
right hand, and a spacious verdant valley on the 
left. I lingered a moment on the trail, rejoicing 
in the quiet splendour, and then noticed a vine-clad 
hut still farther up the slope. 

"That's Mr, Dreve's cabin/' the boy said. 
I learned from him that this man Dreve was 
well-loved in the village and in the big city be- 
yond ; that he was a very different man now from 
the one who had come here a few years ago; that 
he was torn and maddened then, cursing God, 
but too stubborn to kill himself. - 

"What helped him?" said I, because the boy 
had paused. 

"Well, it wasn't the climate," he answered. 
[219 ] 



THE HIVE 



I saw he was wondering if I were worth risking 
the truth upon. 

"Did he fight it out with himself?" I asked 
carelessly. 

"Yes," said the boy, and I now met a fine 
straight pair of eyes. . . . 

There was an old sharp wedge to the story. 
Dreve's sweetheart had died — the loss twisting 
him to the point almost of insanity. He had 
climbed this mountain, it was said, and remained 
for three days, until the town began to search. 
The marshal had found him sitting up there, where 
the shack is now. Dreve was quiet and normal, 
but confessed himself hungry. He had returned 
to the mountain soon afterward, and built his 
cabin. In six months, Dreve was all changed 
over. He seemed to have a new body and new 
mind. 

"You said he's here four days a week," I sug- 
gested. 

"Yes, he goes to the city. He has a good busi- 
ness, but has mastered it to the point that several 
younger men can run it. Dreve only gives two 
or three days a week to business affairs, though 

he has been a great worker " 

, "He's up there now ?" I asked. 

"Yes." 

"Does he mind strangers?" 

"Not your kind." 

[ 220 ] 



THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 

I thanked him, and added, "Tell me — he means 
a lot to you, doesn't he?" 

"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going 
back now." 

Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep- 
eyed. Time had been driven to truce in his case. 
His face showed many battles, but when he spoke, 
a kind of new day dawned and you looked into 
the face of a boy. I remained with him three 
days. We talked of the new magic in the 
training of children. We talked of the New 
Age and the great song of joy and peace that 
would break across the world when troops turned 
home. 

Dreve had something. He seemed to breathe 
something out of the air that other men's lungs 
aren't trained for. He seemed to have within 
everything necessary for a human being, includ- 
ing vision and humour and a firm grasp of the 
world. He was at peace about God and the 
world; at peace also about death. Slowly it 
dawned upon me that this man had walked arm 
in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life 
had been forced to confess that she had nothing 
worse to offer, whereupon the two had become 
fast friends. 

When a man can sit tight and lose everything 
he formerly wanted in the sense of world posses- 
sions; when he has winnowed the last shams out 

[221 ] 



THE HIVE 



of the things called fame and convention and so* 
ciety; when he has lost the woman who means all 
the world to him, and still loves her memory and 
her soul better than the living presence of any 
other woman; when he has come to realise that 
death contains everything he wants, yet is content 
to wait for it — the idea of hell becomes a boyish 
thing to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his 
old place as a Son of the Morning. 

We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did 
not even wear a hat. 

"I came here in great shadow and could not beai 
the light," he said. "But one day I found my 
heart lifting a little as the sun came out. Then I 
found that it was really true — that sunlight 
helped me. The more I thought about it, the 
more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more 
its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take 
anything to the light, and it ceases to be form- 
idable. Sickness is a confession. The time is at 
hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a 
confession of ignorance which is a lack of light. If 
one is weak he cannot stand the light. Trans- 
planted things must be protected from the light. 
St. Paul on the road to Damascus did not have 
enough inner light to endure the great flash from 
without. Light works upon evil like quicklime — 
that's why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is 
also hostile to the utterly stupid idea of what 
clothing is for — clothing that thwarts and stran- 

[ 222 ] 



THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 

gles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's 
nothing the matter with sunlight " 

The sun had not only redeemed the physical 
shadows of Dreve's life, but symbolised the 
spiritual light which had come to him with the 
calm and power of the greater noon-day. He did 
not speak in exact statements of the one who was 
gone, but that romance, too, was like light about 
his head. I thought of the wonderful thing that 
Beatrice said which helped to heal the forlorn 
heart of her great lover : 

"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen 
of that Rome whereof Christ is a Roman " 

And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning 
over the barrier of heaven with sweet and im- 
mortal messages for him who waited below in the 
very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great 
lovewomen bridge the Unseen for their lovers, 
who in their turn give to the world the mighty 
documents of the human heart. In passing, this 
woman had become everything to Dreve, so that 
I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone but twice- 
powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He 
brought to her spirit now the greatest gift that 
man can bring to his mate — the love of the world 
through her heart. 

We had walked down to the ocean. Many 
young people were bathing in the surf or playing 
on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve per- 
haps, but I confess that human beings never be- 

[223] 



THE HIVE 



fore looked so wonderful to me — a fearlessness 
and candour and beauty about the moving groups 
that was like a vision of the future. All small- 
ness of self was smoothed away in the grand 
harmony of sun and sand and sea. 

"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, 
isn't it?" he asked quietly. "Aren't they splendid 
together — the big boys and girls of California? 
. . . Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. 
I'm not lost in dreams. I know well the darkness 
of the world. But there are great ones among 
the boys and girls playing together here. All are 
on the road, but the great ones of the Reconstruc- 
tion are already here in the world — playing. 

"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are 
labourers, then artisans, then artists, then workers 
— at last we learn to play. That means that we 
dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value 
to others — when we dare to become as little chil- 
dren. . . . Hear them laugh. . . . You wouldn't 
think this was the saddest little planet in the uni- 
verse. . . . Look at that tall young pair of sun- 
burnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting again. 
Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is 
just dawning upon him that the man who walks 
with this girl must walk to God. 

". . . Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, 
"there is flippancy and a touch of the uncouth 
here and there — but we have all played clumsily 
at first." 

[224] 



THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 

I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable 
health. His stride up the mountain-side was ac- 
tually buoyant. 

"Did you ever feel that you could live as long 
as you pleased?" he asked. 

"No." 

"I think one does not learn this until after 
one has wanted to die. One must live above the 
body and not in it — -in order to make it serve 
indefinitely — quite the same as you would climb 
above a street to watch a parade go by." 

I put that thought away for contemplation, 
knowing that it belonged to a certain mystery of 
Dreve's regeneration. 

"You know," he added, "one has to get very 
tired to want to die. Those young people down 
on the shore — they want to live. They are not 
tired. They want to cross all the rivers. They 
mean to miss nothing down here. They can't 
see through it all. It challenges them. But the 
time comes when everything on earth seems to 
betray. Then you have to turn to the Unseen 
for the big gamble. The world is learning it rap- 
idly to-day. Look- " 

We had reached his hill-cabin. 

He turned from the sea to the valley. Night 
was falling. There was a big moss-rose plant 
that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all 
the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was 

[225] 



THE HIVE 

a constancy about it, and the great sun-shot hill 
was blessed with the light and creativeness of the 
long day. It was like the song of finished labour 
from a peasant's heart. . . . One forgot the 
world, the war, forgot that the holy heart of hu- 
manity was in intolerable travail. . . . The val- 
ley that Dreve now pointed to was like an Eng- 
lish pastorale. It had the look of age and long 
sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was 
quick to catch the thought in my mind. 

". . . It is like England, 5 ' he said. 'There 
was a development of detail in English country- 
life as nowhere else. I think of cherries and cattle, 
of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs 
and sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authori- 
tative cookery, natural service and Elizabethan 
inns. . . . Everything was regular and com- 
fortable. One forgot to-morrow and yesterday 
in England before the war. I heard a dog-trainer, 
speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, 
but his breeding isn't exactly reglar.' . . . With 
a rush it came to me that nothing in the world 
is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale 
any more — everything changed, demoralised — but 
only for the present." 

The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. 
Our eyes were lost in the California valley which 
seemed to be growing deeper in the thickness of 
night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to 

[226] 



THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 

hear vesper bells from some Kentish village. His 
low voice finished the picture : 

"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, 
vine-finished stone-work, doves in the towers and 
under the eaves, evening bells and honest 
goods. ... I think of the ships going forth from 
England, boys from the inland countries answer- 
ing the call of the sea and finding their fore-and- 
afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol. 
. . . You know it is the things that make the 
romance of a country that endure ? All these will 
come again. All the good and perfect things of 
the spirit of old England will come again. . . . 
Our hearts burn within to think of the yearning 
in the world for a peaceful valley like this. . . . 
Think, if I could take your hand now and watch 
the sun go down upon a peaceful world . . . 
hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the per- 
fumed mist of evening . . , doves under the eave? 
and the sleepy voices of children. ... I think 
Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and 
then lose its madness for strife — if the big picture 
of our valley at evening were placed before the 
battle-lines as we see it now." 

Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I 
saw a bone-white line under the tan, running from 
chin to jaw. 

"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. 
"It had to be so. Each knew that. Just as she 
was going, the woman said, 'I forget — I forget 

[227] 



THE HIVE 



why I have to go away.' ... It would be that 
way with the soldiers, if they could look down 
upon their own valleys and farms. They would 
forget war and hurry down, saying, 'I'm com- 
ing!'" 

I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of 
peace and power. I wanted to tell it. Apparently 
Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to 
pay for these big things, but many are willing to 
pay the price if the way is clear. Dreve had 
suffered all he could; then something had turned 
within him, and he found himself in Day again 
instead of Death. 

"It must be told differently," he began. "For 
instance, if I should tell you that the way is to 
love your neighbour as yourself, you wouldn't 
have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the 
efflux of soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't 
help me until I had experience. Happiness is 
the loss of the sense of self. You can see that 
clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. 
We loosen something inside that sets us free for a 
moment, and we say we've had a good time. 

"There are great powers within. The greater 
the man, the more he uses this fact. We thought 
of steam as a finished power until the big straight- 
line force of electricity was released. We can't 
explain it, but we have touched certain of the laws 
which it obeys. The materialist is inclined, as 

[228] 



THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 

ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be 
uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the 
kerosene lamp was the last word in illumination. 
The occultist declares that there are still higher 
and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and in- 
dulging in the laughter of curves and decoration 
where the cold monster electricity moves only in 
straight lines. 

"Men have died to tell the story that happiness 
is radiation, not reflection — that we have it all 
inside, if we could only turn it loose — that all 
pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disap- 
pear the instant we enter the larger dimension of 
life, exactly as the moon goes out of sight in the 
presence of the incandescent sun. 

"1 was emptied of all that life meant in the 
world — but something new flooded in. I saw 
that all was not lost, but that all was greater than 
I could dream ; that all was waiting for fuller and 
finer expression. I saw that what I could do for 
you, or for any man or woman or child, brought 
me a living force of the love I was dying for. 
It became clear that I needed only to clear away 
the choking evil of self, in order to feel that I 
was a part of the tender and mighty Plan, — to 
touch the rhythm of the Source, from which all 
songs and heroisms and martyrdoms come. 

"It has all been said again and again. There 

comes a moment usually after much pain when 

the human mind realises that it is invincible when 

[229] 



THE HIVE 



working with the Plan; that it may even merge 
with a kind of Divine Potency yet retain itself; 
that it can actually perform its actions with the 
help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars 
are swung and the avatars are born. 

"A cold monster indeed is this electricity com- 
pared to the odic force, the dynamo of which is 
the human will. But the magic of it all lies in 
the reverse of the whole system of use. This 
force destroys when used for self, but constructs 
when it is turned outward. Here we touch the 
law again that happiness is in radiation — in the 
loss of the sense of self — in incandescence — " 

Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing 
charm. "I would say that it was all in loving 
one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has 
been said so much. ... It is true. You seemed 
to know it to-day on the shore. You seemed to 
see the great ones passing there. If the world 
could only know the joy of seeing the sons of 
God in the eyes of passing men!' 5 

Night had come. We sat at the doorway of 
his cabin, a waver of firelight within, stars clear- 
ing above the misty sea. 

"It's all play when one gets into the Plan — 
all pain while one resists the Plan," Dreve added 
slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong will; 
that I had good will-force, as men go. It was 
the will of an invalid child. If men could only 

t 2 3o] 



THE MAN WHO FOUND PEACE 

know the force that is theirs to use when they 
enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old 
habits and ways and propensities — but only be- 
cause they are harmful and impeding. All which 
really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It 
returns to you with fresh loveliness and power. 
One does not give up three-space to understand 
four-space. The truth is he must rise above the 
former to see it alL 

"It isn't you and I who matter/ 5 he said 
abruptly, after a pause. "These things are for 
all. I know what comes afterward — to a man or 
to a nation— when driven to the last ditch of pain. 
A new dimension of power comes. That's what 
happens. That's what the New Age is all about. 
That's what the war means. We shall learn 
our new chastity. We shall emerge as a race 
into a more serene and splendid conscious- 
ness. . . . The price— the dead. ... I could 
tell you something about that. One must have 
prayed for death to know about that. Don't 
think of that now — only take it from me, or from 
your own soul, that the big Plan is all right — 
that They haven't made any mistakes yet — that 
the loved one is only away for a time — busy — 
quite right — about the Father's business. An- 
other time for that. 

"I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve 
finished. "That was play. It was all a laugh 
down there. The big forces and the big people 

[ 231 ] 



THE HIVE 



are always a part of laughter. The laugh will 
take you to the throne. The Gods laugh. . . • 
There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a 
laugh that challenges power. There is the laugh 
of the aroused lover in the world. We shall hear 
the laugh of the world itself, when the big reve- 
lation breaks upon us all that the Plan is good — 
that the Plan is for joy." 



[232] 



22 



A DITHYRAMB AND A 
LETTER 



I think we come through at birth with certain 
sealed orders to be opened at distant points of 
the journey. . . . Ten years ago, as I lay one 
night, ready for sleep, hand lifted to put out the 
light— my eyes found these lines: 

"Listen, I will be honest with you: 
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but of- 
fer rough new prizes. 

These are the days that must happen to 

you: 
You shall not heap up what is called riches; 

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you 
earn or achieve; 

You but arrive at the city to which you were 
destined— you hardly settle yourself to sat- 
[233] 



THE HIVE 



isfaction, before you are called by an it' 
resistible call to depart; 

You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and 
mockings of those who remain behind you; 

What beckonings of love you receive you shall 
only answer with passionate kisses of part- 
ing; 

You shall not allow the hold of those who 
spread their reached hands toward you. . . . 

c Allons! After the Great Companions, and to 
belong to themT " 

The thing had come around by India — a quo- 
tation from Walt, in a little Hindu book of love 
and death by Nivedeta. It spoiled my night. I 
resisted. Some entity connected with the lines 
seemed to smile patiently. Deep within, I knew 
they belonged to me; that I should have to real- 
ise them, line by line, then live them; that here 
was a page from the envelope of my sealed or- 
ders to be opened after clearance — opened far out 
on the white water. 

They used to strike me as hard lines until the 
warm laugh came up out of them. . . . Romance 
means Not to stay. . . . Bit by bit, the story un- 
folds that the Plan is good — that the Plan is un- 

[ 2 34] 



A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER 

utterably good, that one needs only to rise into the 
spiritual drift to find that all are God's coun- 
tries. First the big physical drift, the drift 
around the world, along the waterfronts, missing 
none until the laugh comes, until the petty things 
of life, in no arrangements or combinations, can 
hold your faculties or even long attract the eye. 
You know them all. 

One must learn the world first; one must not 
miss the world tricks. The men who have lived 
most have laughed most. But don't stay too long 
in the labyrinths. They are passages of pain so 
long as you give yourself to them. Still you must 
solve the maze. After that, don't stay — don't 
stay to pick up threads. There are other mazes, 
other drifts. I assure you life is rich and brave, 
but there is nothing so healthy as a laughing dis- 
cussion of death in one's own mind — the next step 
of the cosmic adventure . . . and to travel light 
there — not to take our mortgages, our material 
ambitions, our stone houses full of effects — by 
no means to take our card-indexes and letter files 
— to travel light, to pick up the brighter shells 
by the way — every glimpse ahead showing 
higher light— a more spacious and splendid pros- 
pect. . . . Why carry our furs and frost-proof 
igloos for this adventure in the deeper tropics? 
. . . To become as little children— to be open 
hearted and free handed — to listen, to believe, to 
make pictures, to see across apparent separate- 

[235] 



THE HIVE 



ness, to forget one's self in the daisy fields, to love 
the light and the land, to fall into ecstatic spec- 
ulations! You can't do that if you carry the 
plumbing of your house in mind, and stop sud- 
denly to recall if you turned off the water in the 
laundry-tubs. 

Weigh up your external possessions — weigh 
them carefully — for their amount is the exact 
measure of your infidelity to God. . . . 

To become as a little child — to know that the 
forests are filled with other than things to eat — 
to love the mysteries awake, to love the fairies and 
the hidden flowers into strange unfoldings — to 
be fearless and free forever! . . . The Little 
Girl writes of her love for it all as it comes : 

... I have a half a minute to send my love 
and strong pull for High Flight. We wanted 
this to be the magic week of the Home Coming, 
but it must be best to wait a little longer. Wait, 
wait — that is the old song of Earth — young wait- 
ing — big waiting — holy waiting. I love it. I 
love the suffering of it. One is great according 
to how well one can wait. I am loving Earth 
terribly. It is close to me, with its strange music. 

Last night, the Valley Road one and Esther and 
I were together — touched great white things — 
talked and laughed and loved until long after 
three. Each in her way is a power wherever she 
touches. Each has everything within. Each is 
pure and wonderfully sweet. We wait, open- 

[236] 



A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER 

armed, for you. There are wonders in Muriel — 
and in others. I dream constantly of the beauty 
to come. Nature's ecstasy will be bursting forth 
in fulfilment when our Lovers come home. I'm 
so glad this morning ! 

The children learn it so easily. I like to stop 
in this book and let them say it — the big story of 
the Seamless Robe, the story of Democracy. The 
young men say it strongly; and tenderly the 
young women, — the dream of the mate in their 
hearts becoming the dream of the Master. They 
all say it so thrillingly for me in their words and 
lives — the little boys coming in with their tales 
of prairie and the deeps; literally it is here out of 
the mouths of babes. . . . Dreve found it in a 
woman, another in science, another in music, 
another in the open road. Every man is his own 
way, his own truth and life. It waits for all. 
. . . We keep fanning day and night, many of us 
who work at home— the fanners of the Hive! 
We cool and harden the great spiritual concept 
into matter, as the cathedral spires of wax appear 
and harden in flaky white under the masses of the 
bees. . . . 

I laugh at my own intensity. ... It is our 
one tale, told in essay and story, in different terms 
for cults and schools, for soldiers and clergy, in 
verse and prose, with dignity and in slang, but 
here it runs best out of the mouths of babes . . . 
helping the Big Democrat get his story through. 

[237] 



THE HIVE 



. . . The rest of the chapter is the Little Girl's: 

The Soul Speaks. 

I walked through a field. The brown soil was 
upturned and all the richness of man's labour was 
in it. . . . The morning sun was lifting a grey 
veil of dew up to its heart; the earth was fresh 
and cool where it had rested. My feet were bare 
and sank into the soft richness. The field was 
wide and pure and fragrant and alive. It seemed 
to sing as the sun grew warm upon it. Ecstatic 
birds flew close and balanced themselves mag- 
ically in the sparkling air. 

I happened to be just ready to receive the 
golden loveliness that the old Mother is always 
eager to give, that morning. She helped me to 
feel the goodness of all things — the power and 
beauty of all, and the great, giving spirit. . . . 
Inside I felt keenly the presence of Soul — that 
was the secret. Soul awakened and breathing, 
Soul waiting and eager, Soul, the holy quick- 
ener. . . . The heart beat peacefully, the brain 
hushed all unnecessary thought and listened. I 
lay down upon the sweet ground there — the body 
relaxed and forgotten. 

Then, from the depths within, I heard the 
sound of the Soul's voice speaking these words : 

'This is the appointed time. Long enough 
have I sat mute and silent in the darkness. We 
have learned the lesson. The circle of separate- 
ness is complete. We are ready to enter a new 
globe now, a globe much larger than the one we 

[238] 



A DITHYRAMB AND A LETTER 

have known, much more wonderful. In it there 
are greater tests than we ever had before. But 
the new tests, instead of being painful, are joyous; 
not separateness is ahead, but union, oneness in 
all things. . . . Long have you gone your way 
alone, down the road of deafness and blind eyes 
and pain ; and not the way I would have led you, 
though perfectly right, for it was an education. 
The blindness and darkness of it has taught us 
what not to do, therefore we know the path. . . . 
Ours were not object lessons; always we have 
learned through opposites. . . . To learn the 
great lesson of listening, we talked much. We 
told others of the paths they should take long be- 
fore we thought of following our own. We hated 
all things, to learn how to love; we took all to 
ourselves, to learn how to give. We did the 
things of death, to learn life truly. . . . We have 
suffered great pain to know the secret source of 
the everlasting joy. We feared, in order that we 
may become fearless, and know the mystery of 
the dark. We chose the road of separateness to 
feel the ecstasy of oneness and completion at last. 
We entered the terrible sphere of time and space 
to transcend both and be free. We took upon 
ourselves pounds of tiresome flesh, to make of it a 
golden symbol of the great spiritual beauty and 
freedom. We asked for everything at first, but 
through our desiring and brooding, we learned the 
most wonderful lesson of all — wanting nothing 
but to give. 

"All is for us. The Path gleams before our 
[239] 



THE HIVE 



eyes — the long, sunlit path leading to the 
Father's house. I go home with my love by my 
side. By crying out in agony, and by weeping 
bitterly we have learned how to laugh. The 
world is needing us; we contain all things. From 
now on, we live as one in Wisdom, Love and 
Power." 



[240] 



23 

THE MATING MYSTERY 



I THOUGHT a great deal about Dreve's 
love-story in relation to the young people, 
in relation to the love of humanity, and 
in relation to the mystical growth of a 
man denied the mate on earth. In the first place, 
there must be many great love stories in the com- 
ing decades of reconstruction, if for no other rea- 
son than that great children are coming in. Such 
friends and brothers and comrades-of-all-the-earth 
can only be born through the excellent and 
adequate love of man and woman. In a recent 
novel, an old priest of the Gobi tells something 
of the love story of the future to a young Amer- 
ican who is greatly troubled in his romance. I 
quote three or four paragraphs because this ex- 
pression in fiction is clearer than I could write it 
again. Raj ananda says : 

I have watched your devotion for the woman 
and it has been a holy thing, my son. You love 

t 2 4i] 



THE HIVE 



well. She has become more than earth-woman 
to you. She has become the way to God. This 
leads to true yoga. Where there is love like yours, 
there is no lust. Without these trials you could 
not have known so soon the love that will bring 
you in good time to her breast. The ways of 
easily-wedded pairs sink into commonness soon — 
the dull and dreamless death. It is those who are 
kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who 
learn the greatest thing of all — to wait — who 
touch the upper reaches of splendour in the love 
of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves 
for the greater union and the higher questing 
which is the love of God together. 

The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowl- 
edge of love is the knowledge of God. Love is 
the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy Breath that 
turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for 
his work in the world, who has forgotten from 
his breast the love of man and woman. And then, 
my son, we are almost at the end of the night of 
the world. The Builders are coming in to take 
the places of those who have torn down with war 
and every other madness of self. These Build- 
ers must be born of men and women — the New 
Race — but of men and women who have learned 
what great love means. 

. . . Listen, my son: in the elder days men 
put away their women to worship God. The 
prophets, the seers, the holy men walked alone, 
and left the younger-souls of the world to bring 
forth sons. The time was not ripe for the race 

£242 ] 



THE MATING MYSTERY 

of heroes, therefore the mere children of men 
brought forth children. And all the masters 
spoke of the love of God for man, and the love of 
man for man, and the love of woman for her 
child, but no one spoke of the love of man and 
woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly- 
over that, even the lips of the avatars were sealed. 
But now the Old is destroying itself in the outer 
world; the last great night of matter and of self is 
close to breaking into light; the time for heroes 
has come, my son, and heroes still must be born of 
this sacred mystery — the love of man and woman. 
So all the priests have this message now, all the 
teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Raja- 
nanda who speaks to you, and who has never 
known the kiss of woman — all are opening to the 
world the great story, unsealing the greatness of 
the love of man and woman. . . . For the Build- 
ers are coming, coming to lift the earth — the 
Saints are coming, my son — old Rajananda hears 
them singing; the Heroes are coming with light 
about their heads and their voices beautiful with 
the Story of God. . . . And now I must sleep. 
I go to my daughter, who waits for you. . . . 
Once, before you came, she rested my head and 
filled my bowl in the stone square at Nadiram. 
Even now she waits for you in the hills of my 
country — not far from this place, my son 

In the big expansions of life, in moments of 
great happiness, or hard-driven by pain — most of 
us have realised that the higher we rise in human 

[ 243 ] 



THE HIVE 



consciousness, the nearer we get to the All. Thou- 
sands of people now living have risen, for short 
periods at least, above the sense of separateness, 
in which they realised that the finest and most 
exalted love a man may have is for "the great 
orphan, Humanity." 

The human heart is awakened through the love 
of one, to the more spacious expression for the 
world. All life is a learning how to love. The 
last love of the flesh and the rolling years, before 
man turns his love from flesh to spirit, is the 
grand passion of man and woman, yet man does 
not abandon the woman in turning to Humanity 
or to the Unseen. Rather, hand in hand, the eyes 
of the man and woman are unlifted to one star 
— the Apex of a Triangle perfected. . . . Yet 
one must not turn to the Unseen until he has 
learned the full agony and ecstasy of the 
seen. 

"Love humanity by all means," I tell younger 
ones, "but learn what love means first. Do not 
undertake to destroy passion until you have 
learned its glory and madness. Rather lift pas- 
sion to adoration, and use it, full-powered, upon 
that which unfolds forever for your worship. It 
is not well to kill out a personality until you get 
one." 

Our youthful reconstructionists are apt to stir 
the community with opinions or actions, which 

[244 1 



THE MATING MYSTERY 

have to do with their own heart stories and the 
world's romance. They have a way of confound- 
ing the seasoned authorities of pastorate and par- 
ish, with embarrassing questions in regard to 
method and magic in the making of two souls 
into one. These young people may not be mod- 
est according to Elizabethan ideals; in fact, 
the young women are apt to go half-way in the 
choice of the man who is to be the father of her 
children, but this is an essential of innate beauty 
and fastidiousness. More and more the higher 
types of the new social order are questers for that 
single and holy mating which brings nearer the 
dream of the beautiful and heroic in children, and 
which gives us a glimpse of a future to die for. 

The story of Romance cannot be written nor 
interpreted in life without its hill-rock, named 
Liberty. There is no man-made law for love. 
The first business of human beings is to find their 
own on earth. All makeshifts part away; all 
short-range systems scurry past; all comets and 
asteroids cease to be considered, when a pair of 
suns whip into each other's attraction. And so 
it is with a true-mated pair. Those who have 
dreamed long and kept themselves pure, realise 
here below for a time the raptures of the elect. 
The new generation has a sense of this ; and while 
its eyes look hard and daringly for its own, its 
finer examples preserve an integrity for the one 
until he is found. 

[245] 



THE HIVE 



The New Race realises that promiscuity is only 
a lack of taste. To draw the fulness and redo- 
lence from a book or a friend or a lover, from any 
episode or fabric of life, one must search for the 
true, as well as the beautiful, and the beautiful 
as well as the good. . . . Perhaps that tells it 
best — it dares to love Beauty, this New Race. 
It means to bring back the beauty of the body as 
well as to breathe forth the Soul. Its devil and 
its danger is Paganism. It loves Nature so well 
that it is in danger of forgetting that the old 
Mother is not complete in herself, but a manifest 
of her Lord Sun. . . . 

As to the liberty of its loves — the New Race 
realises that one cannot be held, except by vulgar 
hands, where that one does not want to stay. A 
mated man and woman turn each other abso- 
lutely free, and the first cry of their liberty is 
toward one immortal nest. Those firmly caught 
in the pure dream are content to wait for each 
other. They do not experiment. They realise 
the long road of romance — a road so long that the 
three-score and ten is but a caravansary of the 
night. They build above the flesh if for no other 
reason than to come into the greater beauty of the 
flesh. Renouncing nothing, devoted to austerity 
only for mystical union, carried away in no aban- 
donment, they seek to achieve that command of 
the body by the mind, and that command of the 

[246] 



THE MATING MYSTERY 

body and mind by the Soul, which reveals the ulti- 
mate truth — that the plan is for Joy; that the best 
of all things is for men who have mastered them- 
selves; that chastity is the breath and inevitable 
answer to self-conquest. 

The growth of Romance through an ideal mat- 
ing becomes a fusion at last of all the loves of 
earth. Connubial blessedness is therefore more 
reverently to be promoted than procreation, for 
upon it depends the loveliness of issue. The New 
Race acts upon the conviction that the love be- 
tween man and woman is the holiest of earth ex- 
pressions, rather than the love of mother and 
child. The first contains the second. 

Still no earth love is the end. . . . Built 
through austerity and idolatry, through denial 
and abandon, through madness and martyrdom, 
through pettiness and chivalry, through pain turn- 
ing less and less slowly through the years to power, 
through a little zone of peace at last (the calm 
before the greater storm) the fervour of man and 
woman becomes, in the fullness of time, too strong 
for earth, and in the final and keenest pain, the 
administry of a higher force begins. ... I mean 
to tell this in a queer way through the next three 
or four chapters. Straight statements will not 
contain it quite — for it is still with dream, as yet. 
Rather I mean to weave the concept for you — 
fold on fold — so that at the end you will have it, 
as they do who have listened in Chapel many days. 

[247] 



THE HIVE 



Flesh is not integrated finely enough to carry 
the higher ardours of devotion. If the great 
saints who have learned to pour out their souls 
in adoration to the Father should turn back to a 
mere physical expression, they would blast them- 
selves as well as the object of their madness. The 
awakening of the higher forces of love lifts the 
eye of the adorer from the breast to the brow of 
the beloved — from the brow to the Initiatory 
Star risen at last to meridian. 

A new dimension of love is entered upon. All 
life tells the story. Watch the big birds lift 
from the sand to the cushion of wings; watch the 
airplane quicken its speed until it lifts from the 
monorail. . . . Machinery of racking power in a 
falling house, is that great love which has not yet 
learned to look above the body of the chosen one. 

This change is the last and highest pain of ro- 
mance — the breaking apart of the temporal, for 
the story of the long road. Man and woman 
must go apart for the mastery of self, before they 
are ready for the higher mating. The great love 
story invariably crosses the mountains of separa- 
tion. If we cling too long to the less, nature is 
outraged, beauty is drained. Brief separations 
are dangerous, because the lovers build recklessly 
with ideals and the rarest spiritual materials. 
Meeting again too soon, they encounter an un- 
miraculous creature face to face. If they had 
really completed the journey, finished the task 

[248] ' 



THE MATING MYSTERY 

apart, they would have come into that tenderness 
which loves the human frailties of each other, and 
which sees the manifest of three-score-ten merely 
as a garment particularly made for a particular 
journey. 

There is always wrecking work, before a new 
and wider circle is entered upon. The time will 
come when men and women shall learn that the 
magic of going apart is equal to the magic of com- 
ing together. In all birth-times, in all transi- 
tions, the consciousness of the bearer is changed 
— often queerly. . . . One can endure the primi- 
tive and the child in the other's mind; one might 
adore the great play of passion, and all the art 
of it; one might never weary of fragrance of 
throat, or magnetism of hand, the inimitable 
plays and child things— but the mind is forever 
the slayer of the real. . . . 

Remember, there is not a full union possible on 
the physical plane. The body is the barrier that 
separates souls. Those who believe they have all 
of each other in that which they see and hear and 
touch — have far to come in the real love story. 
Have you ever asked yourself what physical pas- 
sion is? It is a frenzy to overcome separation. 
This separation was necessary for the diffusion 
of life. It is the outbreath, the going forth, the 
great generative plan. . . . Physical passion 
does not satisfy the agony of the soul; often it 

[249] 



THE HIVE 



only makes the agony more keen. In the early 
phenomena of all great love stories, there is en- 
countered that blinding, bewildering need to be- 
come the other — to lose identity, to fly somehow 
into the breast of the other and be no more. This 
is keen pain of love but also an intimation of 
greater union. 

There was a man who had found much of 
beauty and power, much of the Burning Desert 
and certain wonderful touches of the peace of the 
Hill Country — in his story with a certain woman. 
She loved him in a way more real than he dreamed. 
Life had shown him much to scoff at. He had 
been glad to make the most, merely, of an exquis- 
ite playwoman. One day she was down town to 
meet him, but he left her for a business appoint- 
ment. That afternoon, about everything he had 
in a material way was swept from him — much to 
which his ambition had tied itself for several 
years. The man was badly rocked. He walked 
the streets — shocked almost to laughter, to find 
all that he had held for, and held to, plucked from 
under. ... At length he thought of the woman 
who waited. The laugh of mockery quickened, 
because he thought of losing her, too — a worldly- 
heart who would go with the rest — goods that 
perish. 

He knocked at the door where she waited. It 
was opened swiftly. He did not need to speak. 

[250] 



THE MATING MYSTERY 

. , . She seemed above and around him. There 
was a great still sweetness he had never dreamed 
of as a man (and could only remember dimly as 
a child to his mother), arms of tenderness and 
healing. , . . He saw that instant in her eyes 
that nothing of the world ever did nor ever could 
really separate them. The queerest thing about 
it all was, that he used a word he never could use 
before — a word, as he said, that had been so badly 
worked by the world that it needed a lot of wash- 
ing before it was fit for him. Yet it came to his 
lips — wife-—m a way that showed him also a new 
meaning to the word forever. 

This subject of love and mating is only opened. 
There is much to say in pages that follow, but 
now, apropos of nothing, if not this theme, there 
is a chapter of letters. They somehow contain 
the spirit of many things I have longed to ex- 
press. Those to whom they appeal will find the 
last pages of the book richer because of the insert. 



[251] 



2 4 

CHAPTER OF LETTERS 



WE come up through many slaveries 
into freedom. It is the end of a con- 
siderable road to be able to stand 
against the morning sun, saying: "I 

want nothing but to give " ... To be able 

to say this without an answering laugh of mockery 
in the heart, where old King Desire sits with his 
dogs. 

To be free — that is to be irresistible. Do you 
want love ? You only spoil it when you stipulate 
what the return shall be — how the proffering of 
the return shall be ordered and arranged. The 
great love is giving; great love is incandescence. 
One must be radiant to be happy. It is so lit- 
erally. It is so, fold within fold. . . . 

One sees gold, looking up from below, and its 
attraction becomes eminent among all desires for 
the time. We pass it by and look down, as 
the spirit of man should look down upon gold, 
and it becomes a mineral merely. You can en- 

[252] 



CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

joy it as you enjoy other people's roses. It be- 
stows itself. Others seek to bestow it upon you. 

Hold to nothing in matter. It is slavery. 
Give yourself laughingly to your work for daily 
bread without thought of result. Then, and not 
until then, are )^ou inimitable in your task. Or- 
der the performance of your task with mere brain 
and attach it to your ambitions — you but do what 
the many accomplish. Your product is multi- 
ple, not a perfect cube. It cannot unfold into 
the Cross. It misses Resurrection. You must be 
free, even to perform your work in the world. 
You must be free to be irresistible. . . . Genius 
is approach to freedom. It finds its own paths; 
it cuts itself free from the forms and vehicles of 
others. 

We have known the dark slavery of the opin- 
ions of others. Many of us have cast off such 
bonds, who are still slaves to our own opinions. 
We learn to stop lying to others before we learn 
to stop lying to ourselves. Until we are free, we 
have no opinion that is fit to endure; until we are 
free, our opinions are coloured and formed in the 
matrices of personal self, which is subject to 
death. 

It's all so simple. We have to put down what 
is in our hands to help others. We have to still 
our own thought to listen to another's saying. We 
have to silence the self to hear the Master. 

This silencing goes on and on in all our work. 
[253] 



THE HIVE 



Pain shows the way. . . . We must traverse the 
deserts. We must cross all the rivers. We must 
see one by one every material thing betray us. 
This is the Path — money, opinions, ambitions, 
health, friends, desires, all betray so long as we 
obstruct their approaches with our own concep- 
tions and our own greeds. We rise one by one 
above these illusions. The last and greatest is 
that desire which is born in generation. . . . All 
the old reaches its highest perfection in the hu- 
man love story. All Nature binds one to the 
loveliness of this tale. It is the way to the Way. 
Because it is not the Way itself, it appears to 
end. The great intensities of agony now begin. 
The soul realises that only the foothills of pain 
are passed; that here are the mountains, here are 
the deep valleys that contain the Gethsemanes 
and timbers for the Cross, and the plan by which 
the Cross must be morticed and tenoned. . . . 

The sea, the mountain, gold, the rose, the child, 
the peasant's simplicity, the coming of the cool- 
ness of evening, the glory of the clay and water- 
fall, mist and cloud and star, the deep healing 
winds that come slowly with their heavy fruitage 
of power from the mountains, the swift winds 
with the holy breath of the Sea — all these in the 
breast of the mate. . . . When this dream is 
taken, one bleeds, laterally and full-length. One 
wants to die ; thus he overcomes death. He feels 
the great burden in which all other burdens lose 

[254] 



CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

themselves. When he passes this highest series 
of inland peaks, the distances stretch clear and 
shining ahead. This the test of faith because 
you deal with love itself. Your soul, in its earli- 
est advices, tells you that your love of earth is 
pure. 

It is. It is good. It is the highest here. 

It is still to be perfected by the races, even by 
the new races, who must be born bright with its 
untried magic. . . . But so long as it is idolatry 
to that which is subject to change, it is hourly 
impregnating the life itself with the seeds of 
pain. . . . 

You are called to the love of Souls. Sooner 
or later you must go. It is the Path. It is the 
steep path to the Master. You give up all to go 
this way— and then you laugh to find it all re- 
turned in lovelier dimensions. You take your 
idolatry from the plane of mutation— lift it into 
the glorious and changeless plateaus of the 
spirit. . . . 

You turn from the Seen to the Unseen. 

This is the passage. You are called to go alone 
a little way — to be worthy of the great Meeting. 
You carry your gifts of the passage woven into 
the Seamless Robe of your being. All that im- 
pedes day by day you cast aside, as an army mak- 
ing a perilous retreat casts off day by day its im- 
pedimenta — until at last you stand naked upon 

[255] 



THE HIVE 



the eminence, and the Voice says, "Be not 
Ashamed — I am the Beloved. . ." 

Out of slaveries. . . . We think at first that 
God is without — at last we look for Him within. 
We come from the happiness of the Father's 
House making our great journey, but our Soul's 
quest continually is for the happiness again. Yet 
we must not look back. It is failure to go back. 
That which we have left unfinished, is not behind, 
but awaiting ahead. 

We are slaves to our bodily health until we 
learn that the body is superbly fitted for obedience 
to the Soul; that it comes into its rhythm and 
beauty only when mastered. Indeed the very 
process of mastery is to lead it to the Fountain 
of Youth. 

We learn that truly to be rich, we must give 
continually. We learn by the quickenings of our 
spirit that white lines run from the brows of all 
creatures to an apex which is God — that God is 
all. All is God. . . . All is one. We are one. 
We are brothers. One house for all at the end 
of the Road. . . . We find the King in our own 
Souls. We learn from that that all men are 
Kings. We bow to all Souls. All souls are rays 
of God. We come at last to see the sons of God 
in the eyes of passing men. 

Our passion now is outpoured. That is joy. 
We ask nothing but to give, to heal, — to permit 

[256] 



CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

the spirit of the Healing Masters to flow through 
us, but first we clear away the obstructions of the 
self. 

Achieving our own chastity, we perceive the 
potential chastity in every face. We are deluded 
no longer. The imbecile cannot hide our eyes 
from the Flame. All purity must be found with- 
in. We have no fault with others when we are 
cleansed. We see the heroes then, the giants, the 
runners, the singers, the charioteers. 

We learn that we can give nothing real away — 
that all we do for others is service for ourselves. 
We give pain for joy, time for eternity, the human 
for the divine — give to receive, give to be radiant. 
We must be Flame to be fed by the Flame Itself. 

We are prepared by every suffering, every hu- 
miliation, until the personality bows at last. . . . 
Personality is good. It has brought us where 
we are. Do not kill it out before its work is fin- 
ished. We do not realise its beauty until we see 
it mastered — until we see it with the eyes of the 
Soul. All one story. We learn to love step by 
step. We love ourselves, our possessions, our 
children, our friends, our mates, our Masters, our 
God. . . . The higher we go, the more perfectly 
we contain all the gradations. 

The last sufferings, the last tests, are so often 
through the human love story, because all weak- 

[257] 



THE HIVE 



nesses are easily shown through that — all our 
pains so quickly received. . . . The bright san- 
dals of the Master at last are heard across the 
Hills. One laughs then, for He brings with Him 
the beloved we have cried for so long. . . . 
Not in the love of desire after that, but the love 
of giving, the love that casts out fear, that passes 
understanding, that fulfils the law, the irresisti- 
ble love of the Christ. 



II 

... A wonderful morning — a rare Monday — 
the highest hold yet — all is ascending. All beings 
are so wonderful. I sit on a certain bench to 
work one morning — the next morning cushions 
are there for me. ... I speak a sentence from a 
book with a word how much it means and how 
worthy to love — and the sentence is brought to me 
illuminated on vellum. . . . They bring the finest 
fruits — honey for tea, cream for peeled figs, black 
bread perfectly toasted, the perfection of unsalted 
butter. ... I walk up the mountain to work — 
and the voice of the gardener is a benediction from 
the Most High — and I stand for a moment look- 
ing toward your sea over the city, and the birds 
say, "It is time." 

There is a pool of lilies at the top, an Alham- 
bran villa, great rose gardens. ... I come to 

[258] 



CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

the pool— dip my feet in the still waters and I 
know from that how chill the night has been. I 
look at the lilies — how far they have opened — 
and know the time of day. I pray for a moment 
under a priestly Pine . . . and my heart goes 
out in the new joy we have found — the joy of 
knowing that one may be the king of the world 
and the confirmed Son of God — if he but learn 
the one lesson — to want nothing. 

Pool of lilies in the morning sun. (A little 
lizard is walking along the arm of the bench. My 
bare feet are quiet, and he wonders what kind of 
barkless trees they are. He is here and there. 
One sees his body move, not the members. The 
sun puts him to sleep.) . . . The pool is still as 
the waters of sleep. The Sea — I think of her 
always as the emotional body of the world — the 
old Sea Mother with diamond-tipped emotions. 
And then I think of the Master Jesus walking 
upon the Sea and saying "Peace be still" to the 
stormy waters. . . . Each Soul must say that to 
his emotions. We learn to walk upright upon the 
earth, then to still the waters, then to have do- 
minion over the birds of the air — and last to be 
seven times refined in the Fire. . . . Earth, wa- 
ter, air, fire — the first quaternary. . . . Yes, we 
are learning to say "Peace be still" to the stormy 
waters, We do not know how beautiful they are 
until they obey. 

. . . Out of the still waters in the pure blue 
[259] 



THE HIVE 



starlight, the lily blooms — the lotus on the still 
lagoons of the Soul. . . . Naked as a serpent's 
head, the sealed bud rises from the water in the 
night. . . . Out of the power that follows the 
peace upon the waters — for the blooms of the 
spirit lift greatly in the tranquillity of the heart 
that follows the storm — out of the power of 
peace upon the waters, the lotus rises and waits 
like a bride in the dawn-dusk for her Lord Sun 
to brush back the veils and find her heart. 

It is only the beginning of heaven we find here. 
We weary of the world and turn back to the 
Father's House. We have plucked the fruits of 
pain — we have thirsted and hungered again and 
again. . . . Out of the darkness we have formed 
the thought, at last, that there must be quenching 
waters, and somewhere bread to eat that does not 
perish. . . . You can say it in a thousand ways. 
The Prodigal tells the story. He arises and turns 
back. Evolution has ceased, involution begins 
again. He is being folded back to the Father 
with all the treasures of Egypt. He has ceased to 
diffuse himself in generation, through which he 
has become an integral part of every fibre of the 
world, and begins now to call in and synthesise 
all his spiritual possessions. The processes of dif- 
fusion were in pain — the integration is joy again. 
Each day of the up-slope his step quickens. The 
more he knows, the more he believes. The more 

[260] 



CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

he sees, the larger his faith — the more his treas- 
ures, the more sumptuous his order. "Unto him 
who hath it shall be given." 

Again, it is merely lifting the consciousness from 
time to eternity, from the cramp of space to the 
flow of the universe — from pain to play — from 
desire to radiation. . . . One ascends and at each 
steps sees farther. Day by day, the work of the 
installation of the higher powers goes on. We 
give up nothing but that which impedes the inflow 
of godly forces. That which we think we want 
to-day will look as absurd to-morrow as the hope- 
lessness of a child over a plaything broken. 

It's a way of loving every step. Thus we heal 
from the infinite tears of the changes of matter 
and dissolution, and lift our love to the Masters 
and the Immortal Gods. We dare love utterly 
only that which can contain us. If the Masters 
loved us with all their power, we would fall in 
the madness of too much light. . . . Always, they 
give us all the love that we can endure. . . . We 
give our all to them and expand daily, until we 
know the passion to break ourselves open in ec- 
stasy, like the king bee under the whirring wings 
of the queen. 

In the human body, the diaphragm is the sur- 
face of the waters. If our consciousness is below 
that, we are in generation. To become regen- 
erated is to lift the balance of consciousness 
above — to rise like the lotus from the face of 

[261] 



THE HIVE 



stilled waters. ... It is a quickened vibration. 
Simultaneously, one lifts from cerebration to in- 
tuition — from the time of matter to the spacious- 
ness of Soul — from the light of the camp-fire in 
the night, to the full day upon the plain — from 
the son of man to the Son of God — from the pain 
of loving with desire to the irresistible creativeness 
of wanting nothing but to give. 

in 

... I was watching the pool this morning — 
fish and frogs and eels under the lily-pads — a slow 
cold life. They have colour and grace — but eyes 
of glass. They move so softly down in the dim 
coppery light. ... I thought of the lakes and the 
seas, the simple cold of all life — the coldest and 
most rudimentary in the great deeps. . . . Birds 
were playing about in the rose gardens, darting 
in and out of the bamboo clumps and yucca stalks. 
Humming-birds were continually fanning the 
trumpet and honeysuckle vines. ... I thought 
of the skylarks — throats that open only as wings 
beat upward, and the infinite blue harbours where 
the white gulls flash — the lonely lakes and tarns 
where the heron cross in the evening and the 
loon cries at night — the cypress deeps where the 
flamingoes commune in shaded glory, and the 
eagles that cross from peak to peak, along the 
spine of the continents. 

. . . And then, of course, it came to me — the 
[262] 



CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

old conquest — how we must lift our consciousness 
above the face of the waters and put on our 
wings. . . . Many have almost finished with the 
waters of generation — the emotional body of man, 
the same as the planet. ... In the beginning, it 
was necessary to "go down into the water" — the 
terms of the baptismal rite. Regeneration is "com- 
ing up out of the water." The struggle between 
the two dimensions is dramatically expressed by 
the faith, and the lapse of faith, of Peter when 
he obeyed the Lord, and arose to walk upon his 
storm-tossed lower self. His supplication as he 
sank saved him from perishing. Regenerated, he 
walked with the Lord upon the waters. I remem- 
ber, too, the saying, "You must be born again 
of water and of spirit -," the story of regen- 
eration told once more. . . . 

It's a lifting from the cold, bloodless vibrations 
of the creatures of the deep, to the winged pas- 
sages of air and sun and starlight. . . . We 
think that we give up joys of life— we plunge back 
again and again to the dim cold waters — our eyes 
blinded at first by the light, our senses frightened 
by the fragrance and the space. ... As if the 
reflected light of the lower cosmos could compare 
with the pure radiance above; as if the love of 
desire could compare to the glory of the outpour- 
ing heart — the heart filled with light — the ful- 
ness of spirit, the ecstasy of wings. 

• ••••• 

[263] 



THE HIVE 



IV 

. . . The time comes in the progress of spiritual 
aspiration when the generative impulse begins to 
manifest within rather than without. Firmly and 
gently the thoughts are turned to the Image with- 
in or above; the tendencies for outward manifes- 
tation slowly but surely give way. . . . This 
work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times 
a day the thoughts of earthy attraction are fin- 
ished with a soul conception, where formerly the 
mere physical presence sufficed. 

Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in 
this passage of mastery, if a single desire eludes 
from the aspirant, he must meet it later in a tear- 
ing and cumulative call. Surely at length the 
mind rises to rule. One's conception changes 
from the fear, the torment and the red haze, to 
gentleness and calm, a readiness to know all the 
mysteries of life — to care for and respect all func- 
tions as one only can who has mastered himself. 

To cast them out in hatred is failure. That 
means the hardening. It blights the beauty of, 
the vales and all magic. 

When one begins to unfold the wonders of the 
kingdom within, as one is called to do in the 
higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic 
life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, 
more and more, to lift the power of life from the 
torment and unrest of the generative seas. 

[264] 



CHAPTER OF LETTERS 

One finds his dream of the beloved changed and 
infinitively endeared to him. Patience, reverence, 
tenderness comes to the love that once knew only 
the single passion of a male for the mammal. 
Even that, in memory, becomes beautiful to eyes 
of wisdom and calm — all God's plan. One is 
sensitive all through his breast for the unfathom- 
able sweetness of life and love. He sees the child 
and the immortal in the mate. He finds that the 
body is truly sacred because he sees it with love 
and not with desire. These are good tidings. 
They make one happy to write them. 

There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body,. 
Through the mastery of will and love and action, 
the life-force is lifted to dwell with and awaken 
these centres. With each awakening, a new power 
comes— a new joy — a new hill-range crossed to- 
ward the Father's House; with each awakening, 
the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, 
and the beloved without is held more dear. The 
wondrous story of regeneration goes on and on, to 
the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To love 
— that is all the Soul asks. 

Momentary passion swiftly passes in the in- 
crease of spiritual aspiration. Its force is not 
killed, but used for awakening the higher and 
immortal principles where real love abides. The 
hand of the loved one becomes sacred unto tears, 
and the joy of life is to serve. 

The whole body is presently repolarised — the 
[265] 



THE H I V F 



fire sparking upward — the apex of the triangle 
turned upward — desire of soul instead of desire 
of the body. . . . The mating of the mind and 
the soul is the larger, the cosmic consciousness, 
awaited so long. This means that the Lord has 
come into His Temple — the body made ready. It 
means that the mind and soul are one, the house 
no longer divided against itself. The lover is 
ready for the approach of his mate. Each has 
been cleansed at the fountains apart. . . . 

One must be utterly weary of the old. This 
repolarisation of the generative force cannot come 
until one has heard with furious passion, in the 
depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the 
new quest. Not repression then, but transmuta- 
tion. One changes gently, often under a mystic 
administry, but always with growing love for 
the body and for the world, using the life 
forces for healing and concentration and the power 
to listen to the Lord within — the Voice of the 
Silence. . . . Upon the illumination of the seven 
centres by the life force, another mystery takes 
place. The levitation of the spiritual life over- 
powers to a considerable extent the natural gravi- 
tation of the flesh — the down-pull of years. The 
result, of course, is the restoration of health to all 
tissues of the body — the Fountain of Youth starts 
singing again. . . . To you. 



[266] 



25 

ROMANCE 



AFFAIRS like these can only colour and 
illumine the upper side of the clouds, 
so far as American fiction is con- 
cerned. One might write a real novel 
of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not 
now for this; the arteries through which the pub- 
lic is reached by the publisher are not yet friendly 
to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write 
what we please, but we are content with still 
small answers, at least for a time. We have 
ceased trying to force people to see the thing as 
we see it. For money to live by, to take our 
places comfortably in travel or sequestration, we 
retain the handicraft to write for markets that 
pay. We keep in touch with the world — that is 
practical mysticism. We rejoice in the dense 
pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is 
very calmly told, as it should be. My young as- 
sociates learn it easily, performing the actions 
thereof, but for me, many years were required. 

[267] 



THE HIVE 



Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and 
woman coming to a fervent agreement to remain 
apart for a year before their mating, in order that 
they array themselves in fuller glory for each 
other, so that each day each would find the other 
more wonderful than yesterday. The novel fur- 
nished much adventure in the intervening year, 
otherwise it would have been still-born. What 
was the real theme to me apparently wasn't noted 
at all. Yet separation is as essential as compan- 
ionship for the real Romance. A man who does 
life in a book must know this much, even if he 
use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in 
the higher workmanship. Romance — each has 
his idea of that. Each does his best by that. 
Here's a document of the day from John which 
gives his idea very well : 

Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Ir- 
ving and Shuk, I have had the great sense of want- 
ing to be out and away from the world — to be 
with them one at a time. In the Rockies or in 
the misty isles of the sea! All of them have a 
different meaning and sense. One will mean the 
Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, foamy 
bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the 
tarry smell of the hold of a ship, the flapping of 
sails in the moonlight, and the smell of black cof- 
fee coming up from the galleys. Another will 
mean the sun betin desert — camels, and men 
stooping over a fire. They are all my comrads. 

[268] 



ROMANCE 



Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. 
We yousto go down and lie in the sand, read, talk 
and meditate; then a little later we would take 
exercise and a long swim, then rub each other 
down. They were wounderful days — those. I 
got right to the heart of Fred, and he did to me. 
He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. 
Those were the nights ! I got so attached to him, 
but we had to go apart. He is in New York 
now, going to college, and I am here in California. 
It does not seem right for me to be in this God 
blest place in the Youneverse, and he in the 
slums of the world, going to college. But it is the 
Plan, or it would not be this way. 

The new race will stay high all through part- 
ings ; then they cannot last long — for there is noth- 
ing to stay away for. When pain leaves, then 
all will be ready for the road and the great com- 
rads, horses and the road of greatness. It is all 
ahead. In the great future — all ahead — my com- 
rads — all comrads— the world will be all com- 
rads! 

All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, 
not stories, so much, as what Romance means to 
us. The very glory of life is that there are no 
two pictures the same. . . . To me, Romance 
means not to stay! It was hard to learn. Not to 
tarry in the senses, if for no other reason than 
to know the full beauty of the senses. One must 
not miss his train; one must not linger after 

[269] 



THE HIVE 



curfew has sounded. There is no grey confront- 
ing of misery — like that of meeting one's own 
commonness catching up. 

It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are 
heroic moments. We learn to take a supernal, 
rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending of 
lovers is the most passionate saint. . . . When 
Mohammed finally got his morals in working 
order, the desert was said to be full of slain. . . . 

There is something to do with martyrdom in 
my dream of Romance in later years. All pain 
and fear has gone out of that word — a singing 
about it. The name Kuru ful Ayn comes to my 
mind in thoughts of Romance — "Consolation of 
the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner 
Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why 
exactly, save that she had beauty that had turned 
to loveliness, and many men had looked through 
the door of heaven in her eyes — some haunting 
mystery there of beauty and bestowal — the blend- 
ing perhaps of the love of man and God in the 
same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above 
the common rules of life, transcending every man- 
made institution. 

One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is 
a hill cabin, an open door to the dusk, — baby 
heads weaving under her hands — warm air com- 
ing up from the valleys, but his step not coming 
that night. . . . Here is a suggestion from one 
of her letters : 

[270] 



ROMANCE 



Have just been out in the garden planting lit- 
tle seeds that will grow big and strong so that 
they can be put into shining pots and cooked for 
the Stranger's dinner — tiny carrot seeds. They 
had to be rolled over and over between the fingers 
before they could decide one by one to fall into the 
rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset ! 
Does it not awaken in you something of the old 
days we spent so close to the soil? Radiant 
dusk? But you have to look back to see how 
sweet the purity and simplicity of the peasant's 
life. The peasants themselves do not know. 
To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom — could 
there be a more wonderful day than that? And 
Chapel so full of power, then a planting of little 
seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I 
dare to be in a world that is choking in its own 
blood. At least w r e are open and ready for any 
work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking 
for hard and painful tasks that will fill us with 
that singing conquest that cries aloud: "None 
have more pain to hold than we!" . . . We are 
all working toward you, toward that height. 
You will be waiting for us with open arms out 
there. We all send white love to you — our wait- 
ing Mary! 

Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces 
of the passers-by — always these join to the Little 
Girl's quests and dreams of the spirit. Two brief 
additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of Ro- 
mance follow, from the twelve-year period: 

[271 ] 



THE HIVE 



The first great vision of the quest must come to 
a soul over the plough, in the peasant's body — 
dissatisfaction with self and surroundings. This 
is the beginning of everything. The person who 
is content with small things, small thoughts, does 
not move. His soul stays asleep. With awak- 
ening comes hate and anger and much simple 
blackness. It is just that, which gives him the 
power to stand up against the ways he has known 
so long — to stand up for himself — to push the 
new vague dreams through to life and light. It 
is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The 
call that would come to the peasant would be to 
the Town — to many men and things, for that is 
just the opposite from his life. In a simple way 
he would go to the depths of the worst he could 
find — to the extreme. 

The thing that is holding so many from their 
own, is contentedness, satisfaction. The longer 
one holds to this, the lower he sinks, until he is 
buried in himself. . . . The questers who have 
come up into the light, are brilliant, flashing, 
beautiful. But the souls of the "white torrent" 
are rushing on through the dark night, a night 
that grows darker and darker as it approaches the 
day. Their faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; 
there is a' sort of red-dark cloud that they are tear- 
ing themselves through. . . . Only the poor fat 
ones ! they fill you with sadness because you can 
not help them and they are not trying to help 
themselves. They seem to sink almost visibly, 
farther and farther down, as they laugh and 

[272] 



ROMANCE 



smile, and nod their heads to each other (only to 
each other). The light around them is really not 
a light at all — just a colour, a cold, grey-black 
colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh 
if they had anything to do with you, any power 
over you — you could laugh at them and tell them 
that you were laughing, but their helplessness 
hurts you. They can only hurt themselves. 
There is absolutely no humour in their faces nor 
in any of their movements. They are all sober; 
they can not laugh inside. Always it is the 
sign of flight from God to lose the sense of hu- 
mour. For humour is a great inner glowing — 
the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things 
in people and in life. It is a power to forget 
one's self also, to laugh at oneself. ... I see the 
New Race as a line of Classic Ruffians — a Troop 
of Mystic Warriors . . . singing their glorious 
song of stern compassion and deep love, filling 
all with their questing for power and beauty. 
... I hear their laughter." 

She paints the City Street a bit darker in this : 

Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living 
death. Dark and noisy streets, crowded stores of 
trade... . . Men — little men, following their 
women, carrying the babies. The mother part of 
me goes out to those little men. Down the ages, 
mothering imprints its pain upon our souls. And 
their women now — with faces wanting, always 
wanting, everything in them wanting! I have 
been carried away by these dim hungry faces. I 

[ 2 73] 



THE HIVE 



have seen them staring at me with blank surprise. 
But then they hurry on, and the forgotten babies 
cry. Hushing them, the women pass — little men 
following. 

. . . The pain of utter isolation — somehow this 
means Romance to me, in a deeper fold of being. 
Isolation — the hate of an undivided people — a 
man standing alone against his nation, yet loving 
it better than any of the natives. ... I remem- 
ber in an early story of having the hero do his 
big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of 
London. All this has something to do with the 
coming of Saviours. 

Time approaches for many when the little three 
score and ten fails longer to hold the full story; 
one must look out of this sickly warm room of the 
body; one longs for the mystic death, which is 
martyrdom. ... I tell all this from time to time 
in tales — but only the children seem to under- 
stand. . . . 

Romance — I have walked up and down streets 
and open highways for days and found no man's 
work challenging, nothing to keep alive my in- 
terest. I wanted absolutely nothing that any one 
else in the world had, nothing that any one could 
gain. All worldly activities looked diminished 
and pathetic to me — but under it all — the endless 
iteration of the Soul : "Here is a man — as much 
me as myself!" A call in that — always a call 

[274] 



ROMANCE 



in that. One longs to die for that, once and for 
all. 

I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long 
ago. I had missed a battle and was suffering, 
without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet 
wound. ... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies 
in deck passage. I wanted to see some one at 
home, or I should have dropped overside. In the 
fag of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with 
the deep down men of the world, Chinese coolies 
in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes 
of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stran- 
ger. . . . It was ten years afterward before I 
caught the big meaning of that moment — and 
that's why I say so often that the time comes when 
we find the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. 
That is Romance. 

There is more of death and less of days in my 
dream of Romance now. ... I can see a man 
giving up his woman because she is dearer than 
his own life to him. I can see a man going to the 
scaffold for a country that is taking his life and 
hers. (Always I see him loving his country more 
dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) 
... I see him taking his woman in his hands — 
half laughing, half crying, their faces up-turned 
— one creature in that moment of parting, as 
they had never been in street or church, or 
state. . . . Romance in that. 

I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl : 
[275] 



THE HIVE 



. . . Lastly, it came like a commandment to 
me — to give all to the Coming Generation — to 
acknowledge the New Race as one's God — remem- 
bering always that all Gods are jealous Gods." 

It's all in that, our dream of Romance — De- 
mocracy, the Planetary Hive. 

I am using a short story as the next chapter, 
because it brings nearer to the centre of the 
picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, 
martyrdom, love and death, than many essays 
could do. A tale may be a master-synthesis. Per- 
haps it is just the thing to show you what we 
mean, as a group, — what we mean about many 
things. This is not a marketable tale; in fact, it 
was done with the idea of making a place for 
itself just here in this book. 



[276] 



26 

THE COSMIC PEASANT 



A Short Story 

WHEN I was a lad I remember 
hearing some one say he had read 
a story of love and war. I 
thought of it just now, as I lay 
panting a bit in a queer nest for the night in 
the Galbraudin Foothills — in the midst of an 
army that had no country yet — a tragic docu- 
ment unfolding in my heart. ... A story of 
love and war— yes, I had seen one. It was writ- 
ten upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts 
engraved upon the heart— the old red war with 
a new dream hovering above it, and the old true 
love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and 
gold of the new race in its folds. It seems almost 
my story. Like Job's servant, only I am spared to 
tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the 
tales of love and war all told. 

I saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him 
[ 277 ] 



THE HIVE 



at once. Literally, I went to him. It was at re- 
cess, and I followed at his heels to his room in- 
stead of my own. He was not surprised. I was 
always at my best beside him. He accepted this 
gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as 
Varsieff did, learns also to accept the best things 
with grace. I only left his room long enough to 
get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at his 
door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. 
Often he assured me that we were men, face to 
face; that I was not his Boswell, not his disciple, 
but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my 
power was not the power of Varsieff, also that I 
was most powerful when I realised his splendid 
superiority. 

I followed him during all the vacations. He 
loved the North Country — snow on the moun- 
tains, cold night rains, the filled fields and 
shrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural 
things. He said he would find his tropical island 
when his work was done, but that work meant 
Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved 
him. One vacation time we undertook to walk 
together over the Torqueval Peaks. He* borrowed 
a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, 
and played for an hour as I have never heard 
any one play. I had been with him for almost 
three years and had not known he touched the 
instrument. 

In one of those days of our walking-tour in the 

[278] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

mountains an instance occurred of Varsieff' s im- 
measurable tenderness of heart. One golden morn- 
ing as we walked through a little village, past a 
vined wicker fence — a huge yellow cat sprang 
forth from the leaves and caught a bird on the 
wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the 
swift little tragedy enacted in the wonderful 
morning light. I turned — Varsieff' s face was back 
to its childhood — a depiction of childish horror — 
all finished manhood erased. 

Many times in our talk his sentences formed a 
poem, which I would rush away to put down. 
He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I 
went to his room in Moscow after I had been away 
several months, and found scattered among cloth- 
ing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent 
lyrical gems of his. These I gathered together 
in the little book, now marching around the world. 

I smile to remember when I came to learn that 
Varsieff had other friends as devoted as I. It 
hurt at first; I could not understand. His big 
magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used 
to say that a man is at his worst when he wants 
anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff in 
wanting the letter of nothing, really wanted ths 
spirit of all: in wanting nothing for himself in 
those days, he wanted everything for the world, a 
new heaven and a new earth, first and especially 
a new Russia. Then the day came when he 
wanted a woman. This was altogether unex- 

[279] 



THE HIVE 



pected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had 
given himself to the revolution — that humanity 
was his bride. 

I was with him when he first saw Paula Man- 
tone — that is but part of her name. It was in 
Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching 
her, had a different and deeper inflection than I 
ever heard before. She was just a girl — poorly 
dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an 
old flower-woman. 

"Wait, Lange," he said to me, and crossed to 
her. 

It was in the Spring of the year. The morning 
was very bright. She turned from the tray of 
flowers and looked up at him. His hands went 
out to her shoulders. He was searching her face 
with a queer and tense smile — as one who finds 
a woman after a few months' separation in one 
whom he has left a child. Of course, my thought 
was that he had known her before. She, too, 
would have slept at his door. . . . 

I heard their voices. He asked her name, where 
she lived, and how he could reach her again. It 
all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never been 
like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. 
We walked and dined together, but his thoughts 
were not for me. For once, they were not for 
Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often 
he turned back the way we had come. Once he 
said: 

[280] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could 
stand. I do not think the world is a place for two 
such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may 
be allowed to meet from time to time " 

I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little 
later he added strangely : 

"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and be- 
come merely human in a case like this." 

The next three years Varsieff and I were much 
apart. I do not profess quite to understand the 
obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. They 
had loved each other instantly and torrentially. 
They were much together, yet there was some 
super-human torture about it. Even if I have a 
glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will under- 
stand. There is something back of each one of 
us greater than our actions. We are all greater 
than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula 
Mantone were only intended to meet here — to 
meet and quicken each other for a greater giving 
to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what 
he said toward the last: That really splendid 
lovers may consecrate themselves to each other, 
but they must also learn to give each other to the 
world. ... In the beginning they tried to lose 
themselves in each other, and they encountered un- 
tellable pain. 

At length came the night when Varsieff returned 

to my lodgings, saying that it was only a ques- 

[281] 



THE HIVE 



tion of time when they should find peace. He 
said he knew they would find peace, for he had 
already touched it momentarily. I wondered if 
she were dead, and he caught my thought. 

"No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her 
from time to time." 

Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone 
in the street, Varsieff had loved Russia and the 
world, a friend and comrade to me and to many 
others. All his love had suddenly been called in 
and directed upon the woman. After the three 
years, he gave himself to all of us again — but a 
quickened illuminated man. He had been bril- 
liant to me before that, but the brilliance of phos- 
phorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff was 
making some strange spiritual initiation out of his 
love story. His presence glorified me on the night 
of his coming — the summer before the war. 

"There are four layers to Russia," I remember 
him saying, "The royalty on top, then the dream- 
ers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings 
and middlemen go together; dreamers and peas- 
ants go together. . . . Yes, time will come when 
the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong 
to each other. They have been lovers a long 
time." 

I asked him about the other pair. 

"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each 
other," he answered. 

[ 282 ] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, 
and yet he moved easily as one in a sort of spiritual 
drift. He was an intellectualist with those who 
used their heads, a devotionalist with those who 
used their hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a 
child among children. Though never known much 
publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult 
force of the new Russia. I doubt if there was 
another man, unless it was Christonal, who gave 
more impulse and direction to the revolutionary 
movement. 

The heads of many departments drew inspira- 
tion from Varsieff. I have seen him carry him- 
self lightly through a day of decisions and im- 
provements and conceptions, which do not come 
to the ordinary master of democracy in a year. I 
have seen him encounter, worked out by others, 
suggestions and innovations which he himself had 
made — Varsieff not realising that the thought was 
his own. He would innocently praise his own 
work, as carried out by another. The last few 
months preceding the revolution were the busiest 
I ever knew. We became new men. We did not 
leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the 
big unburdening of the soul of a people. The 
last few days, before the government changed 
hands, were charged with a wrecking silence. 

Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he 
was in and out of a system of baths and manhan- 
dlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff 

[283] 



THE HIVE 

smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often 
looking away as he spoke. The leaders of the 
younger party saw who was the real chief that 
day, though Christonal is a strong leader. 

I was always a good desk man, and was trying 
to get some order in a bundle of cipher messages 
in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came and 
lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting 
the messages into one of my deep inner pockets. 
I thought he was dragging me off to bed, but when 
we were alone, he said: 

66 She is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her 
forme? 5 . . . 

He told me many things to say. 

I found Paula Mantone after many hours in 
one of the Registmonten hospitals. She was frail 
and feverish from much labour, not regularly at- 
tached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw 
her, I realised more clearly what Varsieff had 
been doing — trying to kill himself with work for 
the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all 
but death and service. I had been too much 
with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the same 
point, but I saw their joint endeavour through 
her. It seemed to me like a death-pact. 

A new mystery for me. Evidently they had 
realised they must wait for release in death, but 
serve meanwhile. The marvel of VarsiefPs send- 
ing me when he might have come himself, gave me 
just an inkling of the tremendous power and pa- 

[284] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

tience which had come to him. Two years, or 
even a year ago, he would have endangered new 
Russia for an hour with Paula Mantone. 

I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So 
far as I knew, there was no woman for me in 
earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have 
been able to look over a living woman's shoulder 
for her mystic counterpart, and long for death 
to consummate the real mating. But war teaches 
lovers many wonderful things. 

Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. 
You had to listen keenly for her step and give 
your attention to her voice. She was utterly 
feminine — iqalleable like gold. Even to me, she 
was the meaning of love. I had no thought of 
her being my woman, and yet she seemed spirit- 
ually to contain some sister who would answer 
for me. Soldiers worshipped her. I think each 
saw his own in her presence. It was the finished 
magic of the Trojan Helen again — every man's 
desire, as gold contains potentially all the metals, 
and the rose the essence of all the flowers. . . . 

She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She 
seemed formed of white cloud — the sun on the 
other side. That was it — Varsieff was shining on 
the other side. She answered him, light for light 
— gold for gold. For the rest of us, she had that 
white, saintly lustre. And even in that, we found 
much to make us brave and keep us pure. 

Deep within, there was some wonder about 
[285] 



THE HIVE 



Varsieff and Paula Mantone which my brain 
could not interpret exactly. But the world had 
suddenly become to me, in her presence, a place 
of divided hearts — millions of divided lovers 
around the world. I had only known the shock 
and misery of war before, and the thrilling roar 
of comrades, the crash of the wreckers and the 
songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard 
the still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pres- 
sures of air — callings, cryings, yearnings made 
audible. 

It was a new door of the heart that she opened 
— her particular gift to me. That moment, 
though I had loved and served Varsieff for years, 
I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, 
because this woman loved him. To me, to all sol- 
diers, she gave a reflection of that superb bount)'. 
To him she gave its incandescence. Perhaps to- 
gether they found it too terrible a light for earth, 
or perhaps they were unwilling to find their ful- 
ness of days in a world so charged with agony as 
these years. 

She left me a moment, answering some voice 
which I had not heard, and stood for several sec- 
onds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her fin- 
gers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise 
until after she moved, that she was there at the 
moment of his passing. I thought of it again: 
She was the white silence. I think the soldier 
died, believing that his woman was there. 

[286] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

Twenty cots in the place — a low, cold room 
lit with a handful of candles. The smell of 
blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled 
with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught 
swept through. The peasant soldiers knew only 
the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed 
as often as possible, but there were five times too 
many cases for the service, and the whole corps 
was impoverished. 

She stood still in the dim distance a moment 
longer, her fingers touching the brow already cold. 
Then she seemed to remember that I was waiting 
at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and 
yet in the few seconds required for her to reach 
me, a sort of vision filled my mind — a vision of 
the peace that soon would come to the world — 
the song of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful 
lands, soft dusks, lit cabins, filled barns, peaceful 
flocks and up-reaching baby fingers — all with such 
a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. 
And when she stood before me, I felt that the best 
part of Varsieff was also there. I even fancied his 
look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in 
an old pair who have lived long together. I 
think that a great love always seeks to make one 
of two — -in different ways than we dream. 

"You came from him?" she whispered. 

"Yes." 

"How does he look?" she asked. 

"He looks like you," I said, for the moment 
[287] 



THE HIVE 



inspired. "He looks like a sun-god, too. He 
looks with your love into the eyes of soldiers and 
statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him 
irresistible/ 5 

"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. 
You are changed. You have come into the big 
magic of the revolution " 

"I am Varsieffs friend, first and last — his com- 
rade." 

"And mine," she whispered. 

"The magic comes from standing between, 
Mile. Mantone." 

She smiled and bent toward me. She had been 
like a tall, white flower, but now for a second as 
she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a hint 
of Varsieffs gold flame on the other side — be- 
cause we talked of him. 

"What did he say?" she continued in a low 
whisper. 

"He said to tell you that he and all your 
friends were busy, day and night, weaving and 
binding the Cause into one great fabric. He 
told me to tell you this — that the work of the 
Weavers will be given to the world in a day or 
two — possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish 
you could have seen Varsieffs face as he spoke 
to me this last. I remember his words exactly: 
Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I 
read and write and dream and breathe through 
her heart — that she has taught me well to love 

[288] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

and wait — that I love the world through her 
heart/ " 

' 'Anything more?" she asked in a kind of ag- 
ony. 

"He told me to say that only you knew his 
weaknesses, so far " 

"I love them best/' she answered. "A woman 
always holds a little tighter to the sweet human 
things of her child. . . . But he is a teacher, a 
leader. He must be clean and flawless. ... If 
it were only for us— I should have him, weaknesses 
and all. . . . But he is to lead the clean peasants 
to their promised land " 

Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. 
He caught me by the shoulders when I ceased to 
speak — as if to shake something more from my 
mind and heart. 

"A man must be half-divine to keep step with 
that woman," he said. 

Then he changed the subject by remarking that 
Christonal was not half-divine — quite. 

"Christonal is ambitious," he added. 

"What has he done now?" I asked. 

"He has ordered me to take the field " 

That turned on a red light in my brain. Var- 
sieff was not a soldier. I knew instantly that 
Christonal was not pure- — that he wanted personal 
power more than the good of the Cause. No 
one knew Varsieff's place better than he did. My 
" [289] 



THE HIVE 

friend could only have been ordered to the field 
for the ^ame reason that David sent the husband 
of Bathsheba. 

After the revolutionary signal went through, 
Varsieff and I found ourselves in the Galbraudin 
Foothills with thirty thousand men, and every 
man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the 
peasants thought that if they changed leaders, 
they would march home at once. They were will- 
ing to fight their way home; they had felt their 
own power. Varsieff loved them with a white 
passion. 

"They won't miss, if we are true! They're 
clean. God love them — they're clean!" 

He saw in the peasants the soil for the new 
earth and the soul of the new heaven. 

Germans and Austrians were to the south of 
our nest in the Galbraudin Foothills, while to the 
east and north were the big lines of Russian 
troops as yet unawakened to the principles that 
moved our ranks. Our weakness was that the 
peasants thought the war was over. . . . The 
cold mountains were in the distance — winter still 
upon them — a late spring in the Foothills. . . . 
In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their 
ploughing, of their women. 

Some one said, "They're enlisting the women 
and girls " 

It went through the lines like a taint of gas. 
[2 9 o-» 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

The men were difficult then even for Varsieff to 
hold. 

You must get the picture. We revolutionists 
were cut off from the world. The Germans and 
Austrians sent us messages- — some friendly, some 
derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but 
waited to see what we would do. The old line 
of Russian troops all about — just as clean peas- 
antry as our forces— but officered by the straight 
military class, impervious so far as a body to any 
shaft of the propagandist. 

Varsieff whispered to me that those regular 
forces were honeycombed with our comrades, but 
that they were being put to death under the slight- 
est suspicion— that two or three hundred were 
martyred each day. 

The strangeness and horror of it all dawned 
upon me— the sense of the whole world against 
us, even America from whom we had drawn the 
spirit of our courage- — a kind of holding of our 
army for slaughter. Listen, I have seen tens 
of thousands of troops go down to the pits of 
white and red, seen their opened veins colour the 
snows, seen the spots of red on the brown 
earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over 
the trenches and the pools from each throat widen 
and deepen from one man to another. I have 
seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some 
absurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't 
understand until his moment of death — a little 

[291 ] 



THE HIVE 



sentence that folded them, not in extinction, but 
in a new life. All the horrors of death — quantity 
and quality — yellow and red and white — pure 
white passings that made a man think of the lilies 
—all manner of death I had seen, and still it had 
all been impersonal compared to now. 

This was my own heart business. I shared 
leadership with Varsieff. These lives were in my 
hands. I wanted to go down among the boys- 
one by one and say that I was pure, that I loved 
them — that if they died they were at least loved 
and not wasted. 

I always wondered what those young peasant 
souls thought about death. Once in a lot of pain 
when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and 
was deterred from taking my life, because of a 
counter-desire to get home and see my mother. 
I think it must be like that with the peasants. 

Varsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. 
No man loved them as he did. They looked like 
sons of God to him. That's what he saw when 
they went down to death. 

"There are no dreams too fine for them to 
answer," he whispered. "They are pure — they 
come from the North like all invaders — glacially 
pure! We'll warm their hearts — lead them home 
to God — teach them how to live!" 

He was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on 
and then saw the queerest look instead. Varsieff 
was torn by the thought, that now as a leader of 

[292] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to 
die as well. ... A civilian, I repeat, does not 
realise this quite the same. In the Capitol, we had 
worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, 
but now we were the officers called upon to charge 
live troops to the fork and the grill. I knew 
Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I, 
yet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had 
I known how terribly he was suffering. He 
caught my hands, whispering: 

"You have it, too?" 

It was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff 
had ever revealed to me. I studied his face with- 
out speaking. 

"I brought them to this," he muttered. "I 
have always thought of the spirit of things. I was 
always pure enough, following that dream. . . . 
But, Lange, we're a little mad— we who 
dream. ... I had to come here. I had to see 
this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what 
he was doing." 

I put my arm around his shoulder. We Rus- 
sians are allowed that, 

"I have always thought of the spirit of things," 
he added, "until I met Paula Mantone. I would 
have forgotten everything for her beauty, but she 
remembered our souls. . . . And now, because I 
would have forgotten the bodies of these men 
Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are 
spirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned 

[293] 



THE HIVE 



head to hold to the two ends at once — God, hear 
'em sing " 

The ruffians always hushed and choked us when 
they sang. Something new about it this time, for 
Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of 
their own blood. 

"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits," he mut- 
tered. "Why, I'd rather wash and dress 'em. 
They've got the idea that I am to lead them home. 
I can't betray that — not even for the Cause ! . . . 
I never saw it before. They are not herds, not 
groups — but monads — each a man " 

"We've got to put through the big story," 
I said quietly. "Thirty thousand is cheap — our 
little planting out here is cheap, if we can give 
Russia the new heaven and the new earth — Russia 
— then America — then the world — — " 

I was giving him back his own words. 

"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, 
the price is cheap — thirty thousand every day for 
awhile — your life and mine, Lange — a cheap price 
to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. 
But I can't kill these — I think Christonal knew it 
all the time " 

"You aren't ready for work in the constructive 

end, if you falter here among the wreckers " 

I said. 

I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a 
more valuable servant than this same Varsieff, 
though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't 

[294] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

making any effect upon him. He looked at me 
strangely. 

"That sounds true — exactly and unerringly 
true," he said wearily. 

There was no quarter possible now. 

"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets 
and in the ante-rooms of the dumas. . . . You 
weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff." 

He winced. 

"They called you the Tire-eater, 5 " I added, 
never knowing when to stop. "It's just as straight 
to-day as it was when you talked there : c The 
old civilisation must be washed clean with the 
blood of the new ~ " 

His hand came up piteously. 

"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," 
he said. "Their eyes are building their homes 
all over again— eyes turned homeward over the 
mountains " 

"Turned to God," I said reverently. 

"Yes, but taking my word — the word of Var- 
sieff — -that God is there " 

"He is there." 

"But will He come to them at the last, 
Lange? . . . Will He show His face — so they 
will believe? . . . When they feel their death- 
wounds — the blood sliding out, warm and silent 
— the cold coming in — will they hold to what I 
said? Will He be there for them?" 

"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered 
[295] 



THE HIVE 



to-day. No one knows better than you how great 
emotional giving of one's self to Cause or Coun- 
try makes death easy — -and quickens the Soul." 

Varsieff was ashen. 

"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, 
bring back my words to me. I've talked too 
much. . . . Suppose I am a madman ?" 

"Then you have no responsibility for what you 
said," I smiled. 

He stared at the tent-wall. 

"Varsieff," I said at last. 

His hand came out. 

"You werfc pure in all you undertook." 

Silence. 

"You wanted nothing for yourself." 

"I wanted nothing for me — nothing but " 

"But what?" 

"Paula Man " 

"She's a part of you— now. You look like 
her!" 

"I think I'll have to die to see her — Oh, Lange 
— I'm sick — I'm impoverished, cell by cell, with 

loneliness " Varsieff laughed unsteadily and 

added : 

"I remember asking you to say to her — that she 
alone knew my weaknesses. Now you know them, 
too." 

"She said she loved them. . . . Varsieff, I have 
known you a long time," I added after a moment. 
"I have shaped my manhood, such as it is, after 

[296] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

you. I am proud of this — to the end. I, too, care 
more for you, because of this day — for under- 
standing. To understand — that is everything. I 
who always listened before, tell you to-day : The 
dream does hold. The dream is good. Thirty 
thousand men — -even our singing, growling, big- 
footed, red-hearted thirty thousand — is a cheap 
price to pay for the new Russia!" 

"Do you think Paula would say that?" he 
asked. 

"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of 
her." 

I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself 
believe that she would have ordered him on. I 
had to change him, at any cost. A rather ques- 
tionable way now appeared — to lift him out of 
himself. 

"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely — 
but you have the heart of a woman pulsing with 
yours — every beat. . . . You'd have to be me 
to know what loneliness means. I'd take all the 
pain to have a woman like that. There are times 
when you are half a man, because you are apart 
from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when 
you are twice a man — double dynamics " 

He caught me in his arms. I knew he was 
healed, but I felt the cad and the cur for bring- 
ing his sympathy on myself. . . . He was look- 
ing back toward the cold mountains when I left 
him, and the look of the woman was in his eyes. 

[297] 



THE HIVE 



That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came 
to me with a message for Varsieff, and that she 
told me some beautiful thing about the child of 
a king — but I could not quite get it down to 
brain. 

Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in com- 
mand of the thirty thousand, was a straight mili- 
tarist in training. He looked to Varsieff, the 
political head, for orders. The day came when 
Varsieff had no one to look to, for we were cut 
off from Christonal and Petrograd. We were not 
long kept in doubt after that as to who were our 
immediate enemies — not German, not Austrian, 
but the old line Russian troops hung up to the east 
of us, the same that had recently occupied thenb 
selves making martyrs of the revolutionists in their 
ranks — two or three hundred a day. 

It was a red morning when two of our fliers 
blew down with the word that our brothers were 
closing in — that it looked like extermination for 
our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and 
crippled them with the first shock. Ten miles to 
the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We had 
the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive 
outlook to seek shelter there. As I looked at it, 
it would never occur to leaders who had brought 
Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up 
for a miserable safety in the swamps of Bunda- 
lino. 

[298] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

I recall the distant firing of that red morning. 
My eardrums had not healed from recent months 
more or less in touch with the artillery. I remem- 
ber brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed 
from Sedgwick's headquarters back to the hut 
I shared with VarsiefF and a servant or two. The 
peasants were listening queerly and quietly to 
the far firing. 

I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, 
and certain ideas occurred to me: first, that the 
arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful 
lack of technique shown in this bit of military 
handling; second, the slow cold conviction that 
we, as revolutionists, must have all the virtues 
of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build 
our real greatness on top of that; finally I drew 
from the queer attitudes of the men toward me, 
an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing 
meant a signal that they were about to fight their 
way home. 

Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest 
when I rejoined him. 

"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He 
suggests that the men be not kept waiting too 
long." 

Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His 
soul had no chance that morning. I thought of 
the old story of Arjuna standing between the bat- 
tle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own 
kindred. 

[299] 



THE HIVE 



"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," 
I announced finally. "The dream holds " 

He shook his head. . . . "They are just boys — 
white-haired boys. They want to go home " 

That instant I seemed to see the world laugh- 
ing at this great man; I saw the end of Varsieff 
politically. . . . Superb genius broken down by 
an intrinsic weakness — as a man who, trying to 
lead the world, falls for the lure of an actress 
maid. ... I saw all his work of early years- 
straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man 
to a Cause — the inspired labour of the past two 
years when he gave the whole fruit of his quick- 
ened heart to the new Russia— the magic of a 
man loved by a woman great enough to be his 
divine sculptor and priestess. ... It was the 
thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that 
instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I 
hurried out and whispered : 

"Don't come now. Come back in ten min- 
utes " 

The General paused to let me hear the firing. 
"But the troops " he said. 

"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff " 

"The attack may be called " 

"I know, but I need that time." 

The old soldier turned back, hating me. . • . 

"Varsieff," I said a moment later. 

"Yes " 

[300] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

"I've got to tell you something " 

He turned quickly. 

"Paula Mantone is near- " 

"No!" 

"I saw her last night." 

"Will she see me?' 

I laughed at him. "Do you think she would 
want to see you now? . . . You're a sick man, 
Varsieff — morally sick. Any decision is better 
than your present incapacity. ... I think she 
must have sensed your weakness- — that she came 
to bring you strength, for she is your strength/' 

"Does she love me?" he asked. 

"That's a slap in her face to ask that— a woman 
who gives you her soul's strength — the love of 
her life. That's lack of faith, my friend " 

"I am whipped. The white-haired boys — they 
want to go home- — — " 

"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 
'Go home, boys.' They have to fight their way 
home. First, they have to fight their way to 
the east out of this valley — against old Rus- 
sia! .. . It's the first great battle of the Old and 
New — -first time in the history of the world. We 
hold the New for better or worse — this little 
Theban band. You would let us fail and dribble 
away and slink into the Marshes — you, her lover, 
whom she calls Boy and Strongheart " 

"What did she say?" he asked fiercely. 
[301] 



THE HIVE 



-that I need not speak of her coming un- 



less you needed help. She said you would not 
need help on account of your own lack of cour- 
age — rather that it would be your great tenderness 
that might defeat our Cause now. She said this 
was but a last ordeal, hardest of all for Builders, 
who have ceased to kill. . . ." 

"Where did you see her?" 

It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed 
of her coming. I invented a place of meeting and 
added to his question that Sedgwick did not know 
of her presence. 

"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her 
that we dared to be cruel to ourselves," I added. 

"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked 
hoarsely. He had suddenly become like a child 
— one who dared not go to her, who scarcely 
trusted himself to speak. 

"She said that was the key to the whole matter 
— that we dare to sacrifice ourselves — dare to 
inflict pain upon each other because one's true love 
is the self — " 

I was startled and awed at my own words. The 
idea was unlike anything of mine. It was exactly 
as if she had told me something of the kind in the 
dream. Varsieff groaned : 

"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there 
more?" 

"Only that you must not falter now . . . and 
[302] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

that she would be waiting for you at the end 
of the day " 

" 'In the cool of the evening/ she would say," 
he muttered. 

"Perhaps that was it," I said. 

"Nothing more?" 

"Yes — but only if you needed it " 

"I do." 

"That she never loved you so well as now — 
that you mean new Russia to her — that she will 
come running to you in the cool of the evening — 
either here or on the other side — and something 
about the child of a king." 

His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splen- 
did again. I drew back in the shadow, afraid 
that he would see the sweat that had broken out 
upon me, though the place was cold. 

Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the 
old-line troops the fight of their lives — to show 
the whole of Russia a martyrdom if necessary, 
thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. 
Varsieff had been tempted to let them slip back 
into the Marshes to save their lives. 

We were in the saddle side by side an hour 
later, and close to the front — the two big lines 
moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff 
looked back at his precious boys, following will- 
ingly enough so far. 

"It's their white heads that kill me," he mut- 
[303] 



THE H I V L 



tered. "They are like children, and that I 
should " ' 

"They are all our children," I answered, sweep- 
ing my hand in a circle ahead where the troops 
of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver us 
to death. 

"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you 
know her " 

I wondered what that had to do with his peas- 
ant children. Her spirit seemed a blend of his 
every thought and emotion. . . . We galloped 
along the fronts, talking to the different com- 
manders. Some were students, in their teens, 
faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that 
yearned to die for him immediately, without 
words, a readiness to leap under his horse's feet 
... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of 
life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the 
spirit of Paula Mantone always near because I 
was so close to her lover. 

He talked to the different leaders quite care- 
less if the peasant ranks listened. He told them 
that the outer world was watching — that new 
Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the 
new World — all depended upon them now. He 
said they were chosen men — that he would never 
leave the field except in victory — that he was 
brother and father and lover to them — that the 
world would be better for this day. He talked 

[304] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

like a man at a bar, or standing among the river- 
boats, or a father to his sons in the fields. 

We rode along the lines as they marched. Our 
horses lathered and dried and lathered again in 
the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff, 
giving up his soul to the peasants: 

". . . I, too, have my farm that waits for me 
— my woman who waits for me — my country, my 
dream! ... I build with you. I stand or fall 
with you! . . . We shall be better for this day, 
my children. This is a day for living men and 
comrades " 

He filled me with a kind of white flame. 

Then the crash. After that, was a moment of 
silence and gloom like a cloud passing over the 
sun. Then our eyes began to reap. ... A bliz- 
zard of hot, stinking metal had broken in front 
of us — in the midst of our marching and listening 
battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery and 
cruelty of raging seas, you can know something 
of the shock that twisted the core of me that in- 
stant. That which had been the white-haired 
peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted 
hands, their souls answering the leader who loved 
them, a song forming on their lips . . . now it 
was as if a carcass had been moved — one that had 
lain long in the sun, the devastation long contin- 
ued underneath. . . . 

These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and 
Paula Mantone, I loved them. Now they were 

[305] 



THE HIVE 



down, dismembered, shaking — the air a whir of 
white to my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewil- 
dered ghosts. And here and there, like Varsieff 
and myself — men standing unhurt in the midst 
of human fragments, like maggots, shaking them- 
selves to cover, 

I wonder if you can understand? It seemed 
that I still could see the welter of our boys in the 
leader's face. Also I saw the death of my good 
friend — the death-stroke of that superb mind — 
the face of a man, whose soul had vanished. 

Both our horses were down, though we were un- 
hurt so far. ... A distance of fifteen feet sepa- 
rated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him 
that he had not failed. I thought I should die 
before I moved, before I could get started toward 
him. The staring failure in his face paralysed 
me. For the time, he was cut off even from the 
spirit of Paula Mantone. 

I had to look down and watch my steps as I 
made my way to him. I knew some hideous fear 
that he would fall in that blackness — if I looked 
away. . . . There were voices from the ground. 
None of the parts of men could be still. Lips 
writhed before my eyes — and words were spoken 
like little claps of force in thin air. ... I caught 
his opened collar. . . . 

"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered. 

"You lie!" said he. 

It was like a blow from a man's mother. I 
[306] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

had to look into his face before my brain accepted 
his words. Then I remembered my lie. . . . 
The evil of it had not come to me until now, with 
him breaking down before my eyes. ... I saw 
the look again — that I had seen by the peasant's 
yard long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks 
— the look of a frightened child in that face of 
finished manhood. 

I pulled him to me, and led him back toward 
Sedgwick's staff. I heard myself talking and 
laughing, jockeying with words. . . . His head 
was twisted to the side — his draggled remnant of 
a mind pulled back to the scene of that havoc. 
And now, if you please, we were catching the real 
thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon 
us with machines and shrapnel — the old combing 
and carding that seldom fails. ... I saw the cold 
mountains all about. 

Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Per- 
fect economy it is, from the standpoint of the 
hive. The work of providing for the future is 
accomplished— no mistake in the plan. The 
workers gather from all sides. One by one the 
big clumsy drones are put to death — wrestling, 
tugging, stinging, many workers giving them- 
selves to death to carry out the spirit of the hive. 
. . . The officers ahead who ordered our brother 
Russians upon us, thought they were right — those 
great grey lines ahead, honeycombed with our 
own precious comrades, all of whom were not yet 

[307 3 



THE HIVE 



martyred, as was proved. But they had not 
found their voice. It looked like straight death 
they brought to us. 

. . . Ages. I would turn from VarsiefPs face 
to the cold mountains. Something of the change- 
lessness of the beyond and above came to me out 
of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. 
I could not keep VarsiefF back. He wouldn't re- 
sist so long as I held him, but the moment my 
hands released, his body would rise like some au- 
tomatic thing and blindly stagger forward into the 
pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men who saw 
him — many who knew what he had been and had 
heard him speak but a few moments ago — lost 
their concentration on the battle. He became 
everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly 
they had been fighting on his spirit — that, and the 
thought of going home. . . . 

Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle — beck- 
oned me back, as one in authority would bully a 
guard in a madhouse. ... I obeyed, thinking of 
the lie I had told. Here were human fragments ; 
the air filled with the shrieks of the fallen — the 
face of my friend beside me, the face of a blasted 
mind — all because of that lie of mine. 

Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes 
swinging him from one elbow to the other, I saw 
a line, as one would draw a bloody finger across 
his cheek. Then — it was like a monkey-bite in 
the bone and hair of his eye-brow. . . . We were 

[308] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

in a hail from the machines and the men were fall- 
ing back. 

I think we are half-mad in such moments, or 
else touched with a divine sanity. In the midst 
of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men be- 
ginning to stampede — the plan flashed into my 
mind that I could only save the first lie by a 
second. If the remnant fell back to starve in the 
Marshes — Varsieff forever was put from me. 
Such was my thought. The personal issue was 
greater than the Cause. I was beside myself — 
never so little, never so formidable. 

My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his 
knees and flopped back at the wheels of a four- 
inch Sanguinary^ bursting hot. I ran back to 
Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle — 
then rode along the cracking fronts. 

"Halt— " I yelled to the faces of the slip- 
ping lines. . . . "Halt — and don't you see you're 
running from your own Comrades? . . . They're 
taking over the Imperialists yonder. Our men 
have risen in the ranks of the enemy ! . . ." 

All along the lines, I yelled it— and it came 
forth like an inspired message — lie that it was 
from my angle. For to me, death was better than 
retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little 
nucleus of the new order. . . . My shouts were 
checking them. 

"Our Comrades are coming to us— hold for 
[ 309 3 



THE HIVE 

them! . . . Don't run away . . . they are com- 
ing! They are coming to join us, when they 
clean themselves up over yonder — only a little 
clean-up first, my children. Hear the noise?" 

I don't know how long I rode. I only knew 
that the fighting death was victory — that there is 
no propaganda like martyrdom. . . . 

They answered at first with a kind of half- 
hearted halt. I was struck with the silence. A 
queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken 
the truth. . . . There was firing ahead, but it 
had no meaning of death to our ranks. They 
were firing in the air, and some threw down their 
guns and were running toward us. Presently we 
saw the tent-cloths hoisted in truce. It was like 
seeing my mother again — shaking the table-cloth 
to the birds. 

Then I saw their lines and ours running to- 
gether — yes, VarsiefFs new heaven and new earth 
— saw them running together bare-headed, white- 
haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths 
open. . . . Freedom was an aureola of different 
sunlight around their heads. On they came like 
glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their 
arms — the lines folding together like good mates 
before the Lord. 

Then it was like a blast — that Varsieff must 
see this ! A cold blast in the heart — that he must 
not miss this glory — that my eyes must not dwell 
upon this great consummation alone! Deep 

[310] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

within, I knew my pain was because his head was 
not lifted to the picture of his conquest. Deep 
within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason 
of fate, he was held back like the old Master on 
the other side of the Jordan — not allowed to en- 
ter and witness the beauty of the promised land. 

In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back 
to the place that I had left him. It was trampled; 
the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was not there. 
... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, 
I searched for him. . . . Hours passed, the 
fighting ceased ... we were a hundred thousand 
strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned home- 
ward. . . . Scores of us were looking for the 
Varsieff now. 

And then I heard my name called, and two 
young student-officers caught me, one to each el- 
bow and carried me forward, running to where 
the woman stood . . . Paula Mantone. She was 
standing in the midst of her own people — the sun 
on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of 
one who has conquered fear, but the weariness of 
her eyes was like the presence of death. . . . 

"Where is he?" she whispered. 

"Oh, God, I do not know " 

"Poor dear Lange — all is well with us. . . . 
The boys of two armies rushing together — yes, 
Lange, this is a good day for us " 

She spoke rapidly, like lines committed — the 
[311] 



THE HIVE 



same death-like weariness in her tones. . . . She 
had taken my hand: 

"Come, we must find him . . . take me to the 
place where you left him — come quickly " 

It was some distance. We walked at first in 
silence. It seemed as if I could not live if I did 
not find out what she would have done this morn- 
ing in my place. Presently she said: 

"I thought he would fail when it came to or- 
dering a charge. He was very brave, they say." 

I loved the students who told her that, but I 
had known too much torture to keep the perfect si* 
lence. 

". . . It was hard for him. . . . He isn't a 
killer — he saw only the white-haired boys " 

"My beloved " she whispered. 

"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd 
as here — that the dream held here — that you 
would have told him to be strong at the death 
part " 

She was not listening. She did not answer. 

"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. 
I left him to stop the troops. They were break- 
ing a bit," I explained. 

I had passed the place a dozen times. I re- 
membered by the big Sanguinary — hot when I 
had let go of VarsiefPs arm. The dead had been 
covered. The big gun was a wreck now — even 
the caisson with a broken wheel. 

[312] 



THE COSMIC PEASANT 

Then I realised it had been moved. There was 
a queer mound under the wreckage. I reached 
down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The 
woman was with me. ... I think we moved that 
mammoth caisson together. . . . There was no 
white on him — a coating of mud but warm. We 
lifted him and the woman's breast covered him 
from my eyes. ... I heard him say her name. 
I heard him speak of the tropical island they 
would go to together. . . . 

I stood apart — I who had stood at his side so 
long. . . . There were seconds when I heard her 
low passionate whispers — when I watched the arch 
of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow. 
... I did not see his face again. She held it 
fast to her and talked somehow out of the world. 
Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that 
night in the tent. For the first time I realised 
that he had only kept alive for her coming. . . . 
But still I felt he must know the whole story. I 
did not go closer, but called in half a whisper: 

"Tell him how the boys came together — arms 
out and laughing like brothers. Don't let him go 
without knowing that — tell him how they threw 
their guns away and then sat down on the ground 
together— singing of home and the rivers and the 
ploughed lands and the women waiting for 
us -?' 

"I told him — I told him!" she answered. 
"You may come to him . . . but he — he only 

[3i3] 



THE HIVE 



waited to see me. . . . Ah, Lange, you had him 
so much " 

I looked away. Dusk was falling, the white 
peaks like spirits. ... I had not seen his face 
again, but it suddenly came to me how it had 
looked when I saw it before — that which was the 
bravest and most beautiful face that I knew in 
manhood — how it had been beaten and bruised 
under the boots of running peasants — crushed into 
the mire by the feet of the men he loved so well. 
For a moment, I was in the red world of rage that 
this should be, but then the mighty drama of it 
came nearer, the supreme laughing art of it all — 
that only the saviours call to them. And I 
smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the 
cold mountains — and I knew that my friend's 
spirit was as close to us as the body she held 
against her breast. . . . 

Then back in the bivouacs a song began — the 
men of two armies roaring out a song of the great 
white democracy of the future. . . . 



[3H] 



27 

RESUME 



THE end of Varsieff is satisfying to us, 
and yet I wonder if I can make this 
sort of romance clear. Martyrdom — 
they call it a short cut. There is a say- 
ing that the soul of a man who dies for something, 
goes marching on. The Irish become hopeless of 
their cause, if some one dies for the opposition. All 
revolutionists have reckoned with this subtlety — 
no propaganda like martyrdom; all the sacred 
writings refer to it, our Bible several times, once in 

the sentence, "Greater love hath no man " 

A deluge of phenomena from "the other side" 
has come in during the present war, all the old 
martyrs of nationalism said to be called to the 
cause of their empires. . . . 

What is the romantic haunt that lifts a man to 
such a pitch of exaltation that he transcends pain, 
and goes singing down to die? 

These are matters much better known among the 
young dreamers and workers of Russia and the 

[3151 



THE HIVE 



Orient than of America. . . .Varsieff reveals the 
child under the man of action ; the lover above the 
intellectualist. His love story unfolds certain 
passages which we are making a point of 
in these chapters. The woman, Paula Man- 
tone, represents a loved type in our sort of 
story-making. She brings, vaguely, at least, 
into terms the romantic ideal so calling to 
us in these days. She means more than three-score 
and ten. Her love goes on and on. She becomes 
a priestess, in a sense, and conducts her lover 
through the critical passage of finding his own 
Soul. External battles then take his body, but 
she is not altogether bereft. An intuitional 
woman does not always know what she is doing 
in her heart story, even when she does greatly. If 
the physical action had broken different, if the 
body of Varsieff had not been required in martyr- 
dom, for instance, he might have emerged from 
the final stress of action in a state of spiritual ex- 
altation, from which, I can imagine Paula Man- 
tone calling him back to the gardens of the 
senses. . . . Martyr, priestess, revoltee, but al- 
ways a woman. Every year of devotion to the 
feminine in fiction, compels a more fluid, yet 
more mystic handling. 

We have been very close to the young students 
and poets and players of Russia. In the Fall of 
1914 we published the following paragraph: 



[316] 



RESUME 



* There are men in Russia who have heard the 
mighty music of humanity. They will sing their 
dream and grave their message upon the peasant 
souL . . . Not the Russia of Nicholas Romanoff. 
His passing and all the princes of his tainted blood 
will prove but an incident of the Great War. 
Very low in the west among the red blinking 
points of the falling constellation, is Nicholas and 
that Russia. In the east is the Russian novi be- 
fore the dawn, commanding the dark before the 
sun. 

The young men of India, the young men of 
China, the young men of Russia, the young men 
of America— I see them working together in the 
wondrous story of life, as it reels off in the years 
to come— mating of the East and West, the planet 
seen in one piece, the communal spirit of the Hive 
around the globe. 

... I find myself getting up a rather serious 
intensity over what Romance means, a signal to 
tame down. . . . Not to stay — to drain nothing, 
to leave all cleaner, more orderly and richer for 
one's tarrying, to glance but lightly, yet with a 
deep smile of understanding at the torrent of de* 
tached and unmatched things which apparently 
makes the world — -to love it all better than those 
caught in detachment can possibly love one an- 

* Fatherland. George H. Doran Company, New 
York. 

[317] 



THE HIVE 



other — to belong to the many by remaining apart 
from separate movements — at last to be the Spec- 
tator. . . . 

One may deal lightly with crowds, but never 
with man or woman. . . .One may say he has all 
that civilisation has for any human creature; he 
may reasonably be bored by all departments of 
life, but there is enough for an eternity of rever- 
ent study and adoration in the nearest human 
face. The lovelier the human face, the more 
easily we can discern the divine in it. . . . You 
get nowhere without loving something. This is 
the hardest kind of material gospel. . . . We are 
all incognito — the greater we are, the less per- 
fectly disguised. 

First and last our dream of Romance means 
Motherhood — mysterious enactments that the 
mere male can never know, no longer the mother- 
hood of the mammal, but the coming of the Guest, 
the Shining One — the giving of body and mind 
and soul, no fear, no stipulation, no impeding 
form of thought — more than that, it means a giv- 
ing of the child to the world. . . . The Valley 
Road Girl expresses it in this sharp, short pic- 
ture : 

Once a woman lived in a dense forest, and had 
a man-child alone there. As it grew, the woman 
impressed upon it the greatness of God and the 
wonder of all things. Then one day, she led him 

[3i8 1 



RESUME 



by the forest-paths to the Highway, and left him 
there. 

It means the Madonna who looks up, rather 
than down, at the head upon her breast. 

The creative force is never wasted. Man and 
woman, in love or lust, are never alone — rather 
startling, but sooner or later to be accepted. The 
point of the triangle is either turned downward 
or upward. The creative force feeds either the 
abominations of the underworld, or is used in its 
designed order and loveliness as a point of incep- 
tion for soul into form. . . . The mother-nature 
of the New Race must be quickened by the ideal 
of the coming of a World-teacher, of develop- 
ment a cycle ahead of this race. Women must 
partake of this dream in their maternities. It is 
the light of such an advent, shining upon the 
upturned face of the mother, that touches the 
brow of the child with light. 

Absolutely the concept of the new Democracy 
demands the coming of a great Unifier — a focal 
point for all world movements and interests and 
aspirations. The story of a Master's coming is 
the ultimate Romance — the finest story in the 
world — for that in itself is the story of Regenera- 
tion. 

The work of this particular volume seems to be 

ended. Much that is prepared need not be used. 

r Right here is the breathing-space that always 

comes in a life or a book. . . . Not to stay. . . . 

[3i9] 



THE HIVE 



Some of our boys are off to the trenches; others 
may go. Part of the original group has been un- 
able yet to follow the centre to the West. Our 
good Gobind * who belonged to the pith of things, 
arose from one breakfast and went off to join the 
cavalry. There's a group in Chicago that we see 
all too little of — a diffusion time truly, but only 
to make more certain the time of integration again. 

There is one who came, changing all. We 
thought we knew much about the world. We 
thought mainly that things were settled for us. 
It was not words she brought, but a subtler quick- 
ening. I cannot tell it exactly. There was a 
day in which I was bored, not satisfied, and an- 
other when I was a child again — breathless, quest- 
ing, listening for some one to tell me stories of 
another and better country. All that I had done 
and been and lived was diminished; more, all be- 
hind was utterly done, leaving scarcely any cri- 
teria for that which was to be. . . . No inland 
lake would do after that ; we wanted a continental 
headland, the sweep of the earth and sky — si- 
dereal time, sidereal space. We could only toler- 
ate the quest of the Impossible after she came. 

. . . She came and wrote her book through the 
summer days and then she went away. . . . 
Somehow after that we knew what rains and sun- 
light meant — what all nature was saying and do- 

* Ben Poteat. 

[ 320 ] 



RESUME 



ing. At least, we knew better. . . . Not to stay. 
We could not follow continually, but at last out 
of loneliness, the big new laughing wonder of life 
came to us . . . and when we told her, she 
seemed to have known all the time. . . . 

We teach by making pictures. She brought 
new pigments and freshened all the oils. We 
loved the tints and half-tones before she came, 
but she restored us to the virgin beauty of the 
primal rays. We liked the blends before she 
came — the blend of rose and gold, but she brought 
us length of vision and redemption of taste to 
know the meaning of the Ultimate Red, the red 
of the Pomegranate, the red of the Inspired Mary, 
to whose knees at the last all artists and little 
children find their way — the passionate red of the 
Quest and the Cross and the Son. She was not 
surprised when we told her what her gifts mean 
to us. 

An artist gives himself full-heartedly to the 
emotions. Keen and poignant afterward, is the 
battle to straighten them out, to comb them down. 
The mind holds the truth about it all, the spirit 
sings all around, but the heart holds fast to its 
agonising play of passion settings. 

Desire is like an old King, sitting in the midst 
of his dogs, a King by the fire in his tower. The 
Shining Heir is born, but the old King is slow to 
die. He sits thinking of his old hunts, his rides 

[321] 



THE HIVE 



to kill, old wars and faces at the window. . . . 
He rode well; he thought he loved very well; a 
great name, he was, in the hunts, and in all the 
games of getting. He meditates now upon his 
one-time conquests, and forgets his pain. It is 
his memories that hold him fast to life a little 
while. But at last the head of old King Desire 
sinks to his breast, the fire fades from his last 
memory. The door of the tower room opens, the 
Shining Prince is standing there, and the criers 
run through the palace crying aloud, "The King 
is dead. Long live the King!" Desire has 
ended; the Bestower takes the throne. 

When we told her of this new breath of life 
which she had brought, our Mary seemed to know 
all about that, too. She smiled and looked away 
when we showed her this book (and the inscrip- 
tion to her), so many pages of which she had 
read before — our dreams for the New Race un- 
folded in letters to her. 

The instant one perceives the inner meaning 
of Equality, glimpsing the great Seamless Robe 
of humanity as one, — he realises that what is best 
for him is best for all others — what is best for the 
many is his own highest behest. . . . One must 
grasp this to know what Democracy means, to 
know what is behind the word, a meaning which 
those who use it most haven't dreamed of. You 
must grasp the spirit of the hive — that winged 

[322] 



RESUME 



myriads of golden atoms never stray so far as to 
break the spirit-cord that binds them into one — 
that the one knows all, contains potentially all 
goodness and beauty and truth, that all action, art 
and thought, come from the spirit of the one — 
that the fruits of these go back. I love to tell it 
again and again. I saw it all afresh to-day. 

The sun plays tricks with the earth at high 
noon. One feels superbly well — a kind of seeth- 
ing in the veins. It pulls him away from the 
great quest for the Father's House, in gusts of 
Mother Nature's magic. All the fragrance of 
fallow T fields is in the hot light and blowing hay 
and deathless azure and high noon. Glorious 
swarms of bees were breaking out from the Spirit 
of the hive, all one in Spirit at the top — the 
Spirit brooding at all times over all the workings 
of the hive. ... It was the same with the mil- 
lions of men who walk the earth, one at the top 
— all one, coming and going in the Spirit, replen- 
ished and replenishing always, learning the fu- 
sions here in friends and lovers, each finding his 
one, and then the new quest together for the 
Great Companions. 

Then it came to me that we are only sick and 
blind and lame and evil — in the sense of detach- 
ment. We must kill that out. Hate spoils 
everything. Hate binds us to the object. We 
mustn't despise another's coat. It may have been 
ours yesterday — may be ours to-morrow. We 

[323] 



THE HIVE 

must kill out the sense of separateness from any 
creature, for we are destined to become one spirit 
with him and all others. Something like a cloud 
— all one, as a cloud is one. 

Every morning on the grass — on millions of 
blades of grass — a globe of dew at the tip of 
each. . . . The Lord Sun arises. The dew 
warms a little and slips down the track of the 
blade into the root. There it breaks up into in- 
finite fragments. The sun rising higher weaves 
his warm magic over the fields; invisibly, like 
prayers ascending, the drops of dew, all diffused 
into a thousand fragments each, thin as steam, and 
carrying the perfumes of roses and lilacs and 
honeysuckles and meadow lands and fallow lands 
and lake and ocean shores, — like prayers ascend- 
ing, the dewdrops of yesterday return as one to 
the cloud. Broken into the farthest diffusion, 
but not an atom lost. All the richness of earth in 
essence returning to the Spirit. . . . 

The same with bee and dew drop and man — the 
same with swarm and cloud and tribe — each frag- 
ment and division lifting to a greater, unto the 
Shining Source at last. . . . The point of it all 
is that man is spiritually woven to his brother and 
to the race; giving himself and his service to his 
brother and to the race he glorifies the texture and 
stature of his own soul. 

Christmas, 1917. 

[324] 

3V77-9 



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